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78 miles - Austin and San Antonio are 78 miles apart. And actually, the south side of Austin and the north side of San Antonio are more like 65 miles apart. We can get into North San Antonio in around an hour.
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What you state is true. Never-the-less, the Lone Star plans to run all the way north pass downtown Austin to Georgetown, and pass downtown San Antonio to A&M-SA. That's why they and I state 100+ miles of railroad corridor.
While it is true most will not ride the train all 100+ miles, some will.
Let's consider how long it'll take to ride the Lone Star from downtown San Antonio to downtown Austin. The best way to figure that is to look at the Texas Eagle schedule, then tack 15 more minutes on top of that to account for all the station stops along the way the Texas Eagle doesn't do. There's 8 stops in total, 2 minutes for each station should account for the time of deceleration, wait, and acceleration for each station.
The northbound Texas Eagle schedule shows 2 hours and 31 minutes and 82 miles.
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobSe...Amtrak_P21.pdf
The southbound schedule shows more time elapse because Amtrak always places padding in the schedule for the last station on a route, therefore the northbound reflects what they really expect.
My 45 mph average was very optimistic, the Texas Eagle actually averages 33 mph per Amtrak's train schedules. The Lone Star taking three hours from end to end is an honest prediction. Significant amount of track work will be required to make the trains go faster, both on the freight bypass and on the UP mainline.