Quote:
Originally Posted by afiggatt
If Texas had followed the example of California, perhaps the plans for the Texas T-Bone HSR would be a lot further along. In the 90s, California put funding behind the Pacific Surfliner, Capitol Corridor, and San Joaquin corridor services. With incremental track improvements over the years in cooperation with the freight railroads and increases in frequency of service, the combined ridership for the 3 services in FY2010 was 5.17 million passengers. These are hardly high speed corridors, but they do get solid ridership numbers. If California did not have these train services, it is very unlikely that the planning and support for the CA HSR system would be where it is.
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Your point is well taken. But, there is a major difference between the railroad corridors in California and Texas. In California, much of the rail corridors were already double track, so not that many improvements were needed to run multiple frequency Amtrak trains on them. In Texas, much of the rail corridors are single track, and they are also extremely busy with freight. It wasn't more than 10 years ago when UP freight traffic in Texas was backed up so severely that TXDOT threatened to take over their corridors. If freights corridors are so busy, you can guess how likely there will be more passenger trains - zero!
The most likely first Texas regional corridor is San Antonio to Dallas via Fort Worth, Temple, and Austin. Well, a commuter rail agency and TXDOT trying to start commuter rail trains between San Antonio and Austin have been told by the UP to ante up $2 Billion for a new freight bypass before they would allow any more passenger trains over their existing freight corridor.
Golly, the entire Texas T-Bone using brand new HSR corridors most of the way is projected at $14 Billion. Spending $2 Billion for a new freight bypass corridor so the commuter rail can take over the existing rail corridor, still requires another $Billion for upgrades, trains, stations, and park & ride lots.
That's $3 Billion for slightly over 100 miles of track just between San Antonio and Austin. Imagine what it'll cost to build the 90 mph rail the rest of the way between Austin and DFW, and eventually all the way to Houston.
I'm of the opinion it'll be cheaper to build dedicated HSR corridors in Texas than to expand the existing rail corridor's capacity. Especially if new freight bypass corridors must be built anyways so passenger trains can run on the existing corridors.