The latest and greatest comes from my adopted home state of Texas. The usual suspects want to put in a rail from Houston to Dallas.
Proposed routes for Dallas-Houston high-speed rail revealed
Texans got their first glimpses Tuesday of the potential routes a proposed bullet train could take from Dallas to Houston.
The 240-mile project, which could be the first high-speed rail line in America, is expected to get people between the two cities in 90 minutes. If funding is secured and federal approval granted, the train could be running by 2021....
...That downtown station would make it easier for Texas Central to achieve a chief goal for the project: tying in to existing public transit at both end points. Dallas City Council members Lee Kleinman and Vonciel Jones Hill lobbied for Union Station to serve as the North Texas terminus. Union Station serves two Dallas Area Rapid Transit light-rail lines, an Amtrak line and the TRE passenger train that connects Dallas and Fort Worth.
“We want the train speeding to Union Station,” Hill said to applause at the meeting at the Dallas Infomart. A handful of residents later agreed in a public hearing.
The company is eyeing four general areas for the Houston station. One is downtown; the three others are northwest of the city center....
...Texas Central plans to build the project completely with private funds and has already begun soliciting investors. Although the company has not said how much the project will cost, estimates put the amount at about $10 billion.
The company has the power to use eminent domain for the project. The two routes selected for closer consideration largely follow existing rail lines or utility rights of way, which would minimize the need for land purchases or seizure.
The company estimates it needs only 3,000 acres between Dallas and Houston in addition to existing rights of way to build the 240-mile line.
Government officials estimate that the drive from Dallas to Houston, which now takes about four hours, could take six hours by 2035. They estimate the average speed on I-45 between the two cities will drop from 60 mph to 40 mph over that time.
A major contributor to the additional traffic is the expected population growth in both metropolitan areas.
“It’s going to be nearly doubling in both situations,” Jamie Maughan, an environmental analysis lead with the Federal Railroad Administration, said.
California is already building an 800-mile high-speed rail system. But that project has been bogged down with hometown feuds, lawsuits and political battles. Private investments involved with the Texas line could avoid the bureaucratic hurdles tied to public funds. And Texas’ rural and relatively flat terrain is easy to build on.
“We believe that high-speed rail is the biggest game changer in transportation since the federal highway system was established,” Hill said.
Ok, it's an interesting concept but again, if you build it, will people use it?
I recently read Nuts, a book written by the founders of Southwest Airlines. One of the points they made was they were not in competition with the big airlines, they were in competition with bus services and cars. We could let you fly from Dallas to Houston at 700am, have your meeting at 900am, get you back on the plane by 1100am and be back in Dallas for lunch. That is an issue now because in flying from those two cities you spend more time getting molested by TSA than you spend in the air. So again, we go back to high speed rail.
The distance from Houston to Dallas is around 240 miles. Assume you average 70 mph on I-45, that is around 3.5 hours. The planners state you will be riding the train for 90 minutes from one end to another. But does that factor in when TSA comes in and starts to molest your passengers for the privilege of getting on the train. From the New York Times of last year:
So add on at least another half hour to the travel as you must go through being felt up by a unionized federal work force. Oh, and you will be paying for this. Remember, TSA surcharges on a ticket are not just for airlines. So that will increase the cost.T.S.A. Expands Duties Beyond Airport Security
WASHINGTON — As hundreds of commuters emerged from Amtrak and commuter trains at Union Station on a recent morning, an armed squad of men and women dressed in bulletproof vests made their way through the crowds.
The squad was not with the Washington police department or Amtrak’s police force, but was one of the Transportation Security Administration’s Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response squads — VIPR teams for short — assigned to perform random security sweeps to prevent terrorist attacks at transportation hubs across the United States.
“The T.S.A., huh,” said Donald Neubauer of Greenville, Ohio, as he walked past the squad. “I thought they were just at the airports.”
With little fanfare, the agency best known for airport screenings has vastly expanded its reach to sporting events, music festivals, rodeos, highway weigh stations and train terminals. Not everyone is happy.
T.S.A. and local law enforcement officials say the teams are a critical component of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts, but some members of Congress, auditors at the Department of Homeland Security and civil liberties groups are sounding alarms. The teams are also raising hackles among passengers who call them unnecessary and intrusive...
Now the target of this train appears to be business travelers needing to go to and from the two largest cities in Texas. But if the time required is adding up to the approximately 3.5 hours of drive time, the question again is will they bother. Or put another way, one of Houston's greatest growing suburbs in The Woodlands, approximately 30 miles north of the city. It is becoming a home mecca of many oil and high tech companies because Houston proper is being infested by liberals on the city council who love to manage Fortune 500 companies. If I live there and need to attend a meeting in Dallas at 900am, I can drive south into Houston during the early rush hour (say 45 minutes), get to the rail terminal and be molested by TSA (30 minutes), take the train (90 minutes), get off at a terminal in Dallas, take some form of transportation to get me to my destination (say 30 minutes) and then do the same in reverse. Just over three hours one way. Or I can leave The Woodlands at 500am, be in Dallas around 800am and when my meeting is over, drive straight back. The distance between The Woodlands and Dallas is 210 miles. Just over 3 hours driving.
Again, if this can be built by private funds only, God bless em. Lord knows it will be better handled than the multibillion dollar boondoggle in California. But again, I'm just curious, is there a market for this? If so, great, I wish them the best. But I just don't see it at this time.
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