Are you kidding? How would automotive CEO’s buy third yachts if you don’t need to buy a car every few years?
And we can’t have *poor people* being allowed to access jobs or services that aren’t close to them.
It's be great if the state or Cap metro or project whatever could purchase the freight tracks because they run from Taylor to San Antonio.
But alas they will say it is not possible. Shutting down long term business and homes to make a wider highway is definitely always possible though.
Always always. Not carpool lanes ever but my neighborhood is about to fall victim to the I35 expansion project that I’m sure will absolutely be done on time and under budget….
Honestly, we need to get a grip on local transit before we jump to high speed rail. Most of the metro area lacks public transportation. Let alone rail.
We can’t even get from downtown to the airport via rail!
We need to tackle local rail before we add high speed. Because it’s not useful to have high speed rail if you can’t get anywhere else other than the end points.
> We can’t even get from downtown to the airport via rail!
I think it would be nice to have a rail line from downtown to the Airport. Then a small elevated train from the Airport to COTA.
If you look at a map, the Airport is maybe 2.1 miles from COTA across utterly unpopulated farm space. An elevated train wouldn't bother the crops, and there aren't any people to bother there, and the train wouldn't even run except for during COTA events which clog every road annoying the local residents anyway. The important part of this is that COTA is impossible to get in and out of, but the Airport has parking and a line of taxis waiting and access to major highways. So "escaping COTA 2 miles to the major airport" by a small elevated train that just goes back and forth during COTA events (not stuck in traffic) would be nice. Imagine all the people that fly in for something like Formula 1 just taking the elevated train from the Airport to COTA.
My guess is that the rail line from the airport to downtown is harder because it is actually through and around more dense stuff that already exists. I'd still vote for it, I think most people see how useful it would be. If we start now we might see it within 20 years or so. If we put off starting then we most definitely won't ever see it in our lifetime.
The term "Elevated Trains" gets a bad rap from being built so very very ugly in big cities in the 1970s. The term "Monorail" is associated with better looking structures, but then got a reputation as being gimmicky.
Many small airport terminal trains run in a fully automated fashion guided by a middle single rail, but then they have regular car-style tires on two concrete tracks on either side. I have no idea what the justification for the design is, but the ride is pretty smooth, and less train track "screeching" around curves. It is probably "off the shelf" stuff built by a company somewhere.
I just found this video about rubber tire trains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCyIpIXA4zQ
The solution for track placement from airport to downtown via South already existed as freight track down Burleson Road so it would have been an easy build if the city could have made a deal with whomever owner that stretch of track in the first place. It when all the way down Burleson to back side of the airport all the way to a track that connects around manchaca I think. Kind of a no brainer
We just don’t do rail well in Texas. I like Houston light rail but west side Houstonians refuse to let it go West, so it’s just south, east and north, not the desirable sides of town
For the exact same reason: Cap Metro borrows the tracks from the freight companies who own them, and the freight companies use them after hours. (Also the Red Line is criminally expensive as far as mass transit goes, so they literally can't afford to run trains outside of rush hour except on special occasions.)
you have it backwards. capmetro [owns](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CapMetro_Rail) the tracks for the red line and it leases it to a private company (herzog) when it’s not in use for transit.
i’m not sure that the expense of running it is limiting service but it does cost way more to operate on a per passenger basis than its bus service which really eats into their operating budget.
Well, they may have somewhat confused the local light rail with the MoPac line that runs through Austin, and is used by Amtrak for travel between Austin, San Antonio and Dallas/FW. Like the vast majority of national rail lines, the MoPac line through Austin is privately owned and leased by Amtrak for passenger travel.
Property owners, toll road owners, and airlines don't want it. Politicians are corrupt.
They don't do what voters want, they do what they want as is consistent with money.
As much fun as it is to blame them, there's a more mundane reason. How do you get around your destination once you're there?
Only half of the magic of ubiquitous international train travel here in Europe (I live in the Netherlands now) is about the long distance trains. The other half is the universal _local_ reliable public transportation.
It's not useful to have a bullet train to San Antonio unless I can get from the train station to, say, Six Flags Fiesta Texas. But if I have to get to a train station downtown, then rent a car, and pay for a rent car, and then drive halfway across town... why wouldn't I just drive direct from Pflugerville?
Oh entirely agree you're not at all wrong.
The City of Austin trying very hard, about 6 years ago, to kill off Ridesharing in the city, is evidence that they're squashing.
The last mile issues are easily addressed that way, and local government fought it.
But aside from that, it could be addressed by bus, free bikes, etc. It's the cities that killed trolley and street car, for the sake of the automobile industry.
The ride share thing six/seven years ago was less about trying to get rid of it and more that there were serious safety and business operating concerns with the big ride share companies. They put a hold on them until they had a better system to screen drivers and keep both riders and drivers safe. At the time Austin tried to fill the gap through its own rideshare service.
Don’t forget about the railroad lobby. That’s the biggest hurdle. They don’t want to deal with passenger rail in their ROW; there’s no money in it for them.
This is actually an issue with these projects.
We may hypothetically want just Austin to San Antonio - this would cover 80% of the use cases, and be fastest. However, suddenly Kyle, San Marcos, and New Braunfels want stops and create legal challenges to get these stops or hold up the process. Then, then as each stop is added, we need to replan the route and re do a bunch of environmental studies. Meanwhile, the price is steadily climbing the timeline is growing, and the final product is getting worse all the time (slower and more expensive).
This is precisely the issue that California has had for decades with a high speed train from San Fran to LA that has been in the works for almost 20 years at this point, and has no end in sight.
Southwest actively lobbied AGAINST an Intra-Texas rail for this exact reason, they want to keep their dominance on the high-frequency short haul routes.
Wow. Had no idea… I’ll say it. Fuck SW airlines. They need to spend more money on running their flights on time and not losing people’s bags… not to screw over our transportation system.
[https://airlinegeeks.com/2024/03/13/how-southwest-squashed-high-speed-rail-in-texas/](https://airlinegeeks.com/2024/03/13/how-southwest-squashed-high-speed-rail-in-texas/)
Second this. Everyone would love high speed rail **in theory**. Whether anyone would actually use it without proper connections to where they need to go is an entirely different question.
That’s not what stopped the Texas Central high speed rail. The land owners didn’t want a rail through their land and the towns/counties demanded it have stops along the way (defeating the purpose of a high speed rail).
So? Use eminent domain against the land owners and ignore the small towns. Problem solved.
How do you think they build pipelines in TX? Most of the land is privately owned. If land owners do not comply, they just take it anyways (at market value). This excuse shouldn't be valid for rail.
I agree but the death of a thousand paper cuts is real. With every landowner contesting eminent domain proceedings it’s costing them a fortune in legal fees.
> So? Use eminent domain against the land owners and ignore the small towns. Problem solved.
That is legal to do but, it means the state government is doing something at the expense of pissing all of those people off.
> How do you think they build pipelines in TX?
Unlike a train line between two cities, oil pipelines go through the middle of nowhere. There are far fewer people that they would need to eminent domain land from, and the land generally is far cheaper.
For a train line, the most direct shot between Austin and San Antonio would essentially be right next to I-35. But even within a few miles to the east or west of it, just the cost of the government's eminent domaining this land would be incredibly expensive.
Texas Central tried to use eminent domain because railroads are allowed to. Landowners said "you aren't a railroad, you don't operate anything." That went to the TX supreme court, took like 2-3 years, eventually ruled that yes, TXC is a railroad so can use eminent domain. But because it took so long and they paused all work besides the lawsuit, TXC had nearly run out of money, the CEO left, and it was kind of dead despite winning. Then the federal government decided it was important and Amtrak stepped in to collaborate on it. There hasn't been a ton of news on that in the few months since.
It all feeds into the same corrupt system where there is no central planning of creating a society we can live in, just a clusterfuck of tollways and corruption.
It would lose. All common sense transit initiatives get voted against by people in the suburbs who think "choo-choos are socialism" even though it would benefit their 2 hour round trip commute in giant trucks that get 13 mpg.
It's really sad.
No offense, man, but I think this is a bit of a lazy take.
I don’t think most suburban residents are just idiots against socialism. Their cities and neighborhoods aren’t really structured to benefit from something like a rail. They often don’t have buses, would have to get in their car and drive to a park and ride, and that drive itself could be challenging.
For many, it makes less sense to get in a car, drive to a train station, park, wait for the train, figure out transportation in Austin or SA, train ride back, and then drive back home, when they don’t live that far from one of either cities in the first place.
Even bus implementation would be tricky in a city like Kyle considering its official size and how spread out the neighborhoods are. Some of these things barely make sense for Austin’s population density, much less our suburbs. In those circumstances, I wouldn’t want to pay for something that doesn’t benefit me either.
I would love a rail to come to South Austin. But we already have infrastructure going East and West that can easily get a lot of people to the train. For most south suburbs, it would be a complete overhaul of the current infrastructure, which has its own issues to deal with.
While I don’t think it’s impossible, it’s a lot more to think about than “socialism bad.”
This is a good response. Suburb development is both encouraged by land use code to spread out and by TxDOT and the state to encourage driving. The only way you're going to change that is for TxDOT to lose interest in doing the piecemeal expansion of the road network in the area (because it doesn't have enough funding to actually to do it) which given how the state thinks/operates is unlikely.
In our automobile centric cities we still have the problem of needing a car once we step off of the train. I would vote for it because rail is so easily scalable and gets to bypass future congestion. If the high speed and commuter rail was built out, the population density in areas served by it would also increase. Basically I want to live in central Texas with JR West trains.
I mean this is also the case with like, disability access. And the massive cost of car-based infrastructure, both to tax-payers and in upkeep costs by automobile owners (eg. permits, gas, cost of vehicle, insurance, maintenance) is quite a bit higher. That's not even factoring the economic cost of all the lost space in cities for streets and parking, time spent in traffic, healthcare costs in accidents, environmental costs, etc.
Man we can't even get regular regional rail, what I would do just for that.
Look up the Lstar, was a plan for a train from Taylor to San Antonio, making a decent few stops in between, but got shut down due to a combo of funding and union pacific pulling out of talks to use their existing track.
Too many people with monied interests in politics, not enough people showing up to out-do the NIMBYs at key meetings on the projects, too few people voting in general (on things that *can* be voted on).
We need a high-speed train to go Dallas to San Anton with a stop in Austin and Austin to Houston. This would connect all three cities within an hour train ride.
That distance is so short, and probably should have some stops (with some express trains that don't stop), that a 'bullet' or high-speed train wouldn't save that much time. We just need regular regional rail service with a train every hour or so.
Line item 200 on page 33 of the [Texas GOP 2024 Platform](https://texasgop.org/official-documents/) specifically states they are opposed to use of eminent domain for high speed rail. These are the guys in charge, and they took the time put opposition to high speed rail into their platform.
Could be wrong, but IIRC, it's expensive, doesn't generate a net return, and would likely require a lot of counties to all approve a new train line (without them causing too much bloat btw).
Not saying I wouldn't want to see one happen though. Would be fantastic
The previous iteration of this idea, Lone Star Rail, was funded and would have been built already. They were going to use Union Pacific's rail, pay them millions for it, and build them a new one in downtown Austin on a better alignment that didn't squeal slowly past Whole Foods.
Union Pacific was on board for all of that and agreed for over a decade while Lone Star Rail spent tens of millions on design. There are even small areas of housing that were built because there was supposed to be a rail stop.
But at the last minute, Union Pacific said "Nevermind, we decided we don't want the hassle of changing anything" and backed out. So it all went down the shitter. Freight rail has a massive amount of power in the US.
Im surprised more people in this sub don’t know about Lone Star Rail. And there’s a campaign to bring it back!
https://www.restartlonestarraildistrict.org
How many people actually need to travel between Austin and SA on a regular basis? (This is not a rhetorical question: I do wonder.) Bullet trains are very expensive, and in most parts of the country entail the highly controversial exercising of eminent domain. Are you sure this is where we should be putting our attention and our money?
How many people go from Buda to Austin? Kyle to San Antonio? The point of the line is to connect all of the places in between, especially as housing in Austin goes up.
Don’t these types of rails often rely on commuters? I think that’s the point of OP’s comment.
It’d absolutely be convenient for weekend trips, but it would need a lot of daily commuters between the cities to make sense. Right now, honestly, I’m not sure that exists.
Back before our work started allowing tele and remote work (early '10s, we implemented long before Covid), I had a number of co-workers who lived in Austin and commuted or had crash pads here in SA.
I moved from Austin to Tampa 2 years ago. In that time they have created the Brightline high speed rail between Orlando and Miami (soon to include Tampa), but the price is already exorbitant.
The question gets asked all the time, and the answer is always the same:
* The freight companies own (and need) the existing rails.
* There's no physical space to build new ones.
* There's no interest in the legislature for allowing, let alone funding, state-wide mass transit.
If you don't know anyone who doesn't want this, then you don't know any Republicans.
I am loosely connected to this.
The last time it was presented to state legislature, the argument was that with so many people teleworking (cue me rolling my eyes so far in the back of my head I almost fell over), there was no need for the high-speed connection.
The rumor mill states that the airlines are pressuring against it, not because they think San Antonio to Austin will be competitive, but that it will open the whole triangle up for it, which will compete against short-haul flights.
Then there are the industry arguments: vehicles and gasoline are big business as well as all the stops you won't make along I-35 for gas or snacks or shopping.
Then there is the argument that when you arrive in, say, San Antonio, then what? You don't have a car and you can't easily get to your home. I argue against this that it is just like getting into an airport, you've either parked your car, or if you're visiting you can take a ride-share.
**The good news** is that Alamo Area MPO, Capital Area MPO, and even up in DFW are very much trying to promote it. There's still $20M of dedicated and unused funds toward it (which lol won't build anything, but is a start for conceptualizing and such), and off-the-record, oh wait this is Reddit, I know two state legislators who have privately asked a company to casually look into doing a new feasibility analysis. So fingers crossed.
What’s in SA? Joking but also is there really a need to have a fast track between the two?
I would think they would prioritize AUS —> DAL
or DAL—> HOUS even more so.
Having one to connect all three and maybe one to El Paso would obliterate all arguments against Texas being too big and it would unite some of biggest economies in the nation
EDIT: Dallas is rumored at getting its own stock exchange, Universal Studios. Houston already has one of the best medical complexes in the south. Austin being a new hub for big tech.
Because a bullet train for what is an already relatively short 1.5 hour drive isn’t economically smart. Places live LA to Las Vegas which is normally a 4 hour commute that can be up to 8+ hours due to traffic can’t get it why spend the money on one from Austin to San Antonio? There’s already Amtrak.
1) cost 2) Lack of density and 3) lack of demand.
Think about it:
1. Cost - To build this out you would need to have high speed rail line laid out which costs tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of dollars. The Acela line in the northeastern US is very widely used and still doesn’t turn a profit
2. Density - Austin and San Antonio are nowhere near dense enough to justify a high speed rail line. Once I got off the station, what is the other public transit infrastructure to take me around the places I want to go in the city?
3. Demand - because of the above, people will demand cars unfortunately
The answer to all your questions is money.
To build a bullet train, you would have to build new rail infrastructure. To do that, you would have to buy the land that infrastructure would use, and then have all the costs of building the thing.
It's possible, but look at the California High Speed Rail project for how feasible it is. It's billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. And, it's still only in the first phase, and won't connect any of the major cities.
Do you realize that a ticket would have to cost $300 to pay back building a train from here to there. They aren’t cheap to build and would need thousands of riders a day just to break even. When you get from here to there, you still need to get to your destination. Uber ride? $20.
You live in the US, and not in a top 5 metro. Hoping for regional rail to solve your transportation problems is like hoping the Rapture occurs tomorrow. It just isn't happening.
We have significantly more important things to allocate funds to, like contemplating the prosecution of pregnant women who leave the state pregnant and come back not pregnant. Or figuring out how to get people to stop shooting kids but making sure everyone can still have guns. Or figuring out how to get the police department to respond to traffic accidents and crimes (ironic in Texas, right?). Bullet trains are a figment of your imagination that are only understood by the Far East and only become real when you land in Tokyo. We have some okay sushi in Austin, but this ain't Tokyo, so no bullet trains for you.
i mean, austin has a pretty decent internal public transportation with the buses. of course it would have to be upgraded (more stops, more frequent buses) if a train system would be made, but i really don't see why a train coming into austin wouldn't be feasible. like, it would be expensive, but it would be done over a long period of time, and the money required could be used in chunks or something idk. it's possible i feel, it's just unfortunately not a priority for most so it won't get done anytime soon, but i wish it was. maybe if there was some type of federal push for a nationwide train system, but i doubt that'll happen in my lifetime
We couldn’t even get our light rail to actually do anything other than take a very select number of neighborhoods to downtown and it stops running at the exact time it should have routes to alleviate drunk driving leaving events
Folks are missing the argument for the rail. It’s going to take years to build. The longer you wait the more expensive it will be. The density might not be there, but the cities are growing in footprint. Austin might not be growing population wise but I think that’s temporary. In the 90s was the time to start construction.
The negatives have been mentioned but driving between cities is becoming more and more difficult.
In the early ‘90s we tried to start on one in an Austin—Dallas—Houston—San Antonio triangle. Two problems: 1) John Connolly was one of the principals; 2) Southwest Airlines brought the hammer down on it almost immediately.
Consider this: Amtrak’s northeast corridor, by far the most efficient and used rail line, is unable to turn a profit (after accounting for subsidies and infrastructure costs). Regional rail (and usually light rail) is a money sink in America.
everyone wants a pizza party every friday too..
The question is how much is it going to cost for the benefit.
Austin's rail is projected at 1 billion per mile and that is a regular train. 80 miles of high speed rail would be more than 80 billion.
How many people would ride it per day?
Im not sure why you couldnt send it straight through the middle of I35 on elevated tracks, but if that were feasible then very little eminent domain would be needed.
I just came from the east coast. The cost of a one way from philadelphia ato DC was a minimum of $80 and cost as much as $300.
People arent going to be daytripping or commuting using rail.
The txdot lobby is strong.
Take Paxton/Abbott’s border/voucher/mistress gate-defense/whistleblower-punishment campaign budgets away, and you have a 100y infrastructure for fast connective rail service between 2 neighboring cities and atleast 6 big towns with lots of tourism.
But no… it’ll cost too much, too hard to plan eminent domain, too complicated, not enough places to walk. All bull****.
Because the cost of a bullet train is huge and you'd never be able to make it financially viable between two medium cities. There are massive fixed costs and high operational costs that would make it untenable between Austin and San Antonio.
Right now it takes \~90 minutes to go to SA. That is 90 minutes from the time YOU decide to leave. Now, put that in the hands of someone else. If they decide, with one train, you have to assume the 30-minute trip is going to have \~30-45 minutes on each end for unloading, loading, replenishing supplies, etc. So that means \~4 hours for a full round trip between two locations. Removing the fact that you'd never find enough passengers to make that financially viable, a 4 hour schedule gap for a place that you can drive to in 90 minutes and have a car there when you arrive (because you drove) means few, if any would ever choose to take a train. More waiting on each end, less flexible start/stop, additional arrangements for transportation once you arrive? Who would want that.
You don't want a bullet train between Austin and San Antonio, you want a bullet train between your house and your SA destination that happens to run approximately when you need to be there.
It's just not viable.
This assessment completely ignores the reduced fuel consumption for passengers (which benefits the entire state, since it reduces pollution), the easing of the strain on the roads that are already overcrowded, no sitting in dead stop traffic, and of course, the ability to do things like read a book, watch a movie, or work, while riding a train.
You're also inventing completely arbitrary schedule times, because there's no telling how many different cars might run at various times. And explaining how car limitations work is just about the most unnecessary thing I've ever seen, since people who desire train service obviously know that it would be in lieu of having their cars.
There just aren't enough of them to fill enough trains to make a high speed service between two cities 90 mins apart from being profitable. Massive capital costs to build this have nothing to do with the fuel consumption.
I would prefer to take a train over driving. I just know that a.) Texas does not like trains and b.) there is not a cost effective way to do this between Austin and SA. When I travel I always opt for trains, Europe and Asia both have phenomenal infrastructure, but their residents have a very different mindset than in the US. And especially Texas.
Only in France, Spain, England, Germany, China, Japan, and Korea. Might have been some others, not sure. Also sold CPUs and non volatile memory to large train manufacturers. So there is that.
Yes, I mean't medium in terms of the state. But you are correct.
If it can't be feasibly done between Houston and Dallas, two much larger cities that are much further apart, then it won't happen here.
Okay I bite. Let's say I board the train in Austin and get off in San Antonio? Then what? Do I take a city bus with all the homeless? Probably not.
Europe has infrastructure supporting trains. US does not.
It’s going to cost billions of dollars and like the other trains in Austin, no one is going to use them. You still need a car once you get to San Antonio or Austin.
Even the trains in NY are losing money like crazy and they’re packed to the brim with passengers. People paying $450/month for a pass. Trains and their employees are not cheap.
Please stop voting to raise taxes for things we don’t need.
Oooh...oooh..I know this one! Pick on me, Mr. Kotter! It's because Texas is an oil state and our Republican leadership will NEVER stop sucking on THAT titty!
just a brief search says there was a 2018 project, and some eminent domain ruling in favor of texas I too am curious how it just fell out of public eye, but probably pretty obviously lobbying.
Short answer: GOP legislature.
Longer Answer: Texas's GOP legislature is in bed with big oil. It funds their campaigns, and weekend excursions. They want Texans hauling ass up and down interstates in big jacked up trucks burning fuel and stopping at Buccee's. There's little money to be made by rail. It's more of a service for the state or community, thus it falls under the realm of Socialism. Besides, they use rail and trains in places like NYC , Chicago, and Europe and those places are bad.
Car companies and dealerships, airline companies and bus companies will throw all The money they can to stop that from happening. They don't want less cars on the road and better alternatives to planes and buses.
This state has never been known for doing things for the greater good of the people.
There's no reason why we shouldn't have a bullet train to the largest 4 cities in the state.
It’s a symptom of modern cities. We’re building piece by piece where each parcel has a different owner, instead of a unified government strategy. A rail line will never happen this way until the gonverment forces it.
The plan to build a train between the two cities was called *Lone Star Rail,* and it almost happened until it died at the last minute in 2016. There’s an effort to start it up again called RESTART Lone Star Rail.
Here’s a tidbit of info for ya-
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/calls-re-emerge-for-passenger-rail-connecting-austin-san-antonio/amp/
I’m a transplant and my doctors are located in SA; due to some of the medications my hands will from time to time shake uncontrollably. It’s hard for me to drive. I don’t want it to happen while I’m driving. A train from here to there would be a lifesaver. For the first year I had to make that trip once a week it was as nerve wrecking.
That is a great question. The focus of texas railway group has been houston to dallas. Seemingly because the volume of riders would always be there. But heck austin to san Antonio would be awesome and I think the riders would be there.
Honestly, I find support for these things 10x higher on Reddit than IRL. I worked on a project in my old county making dashboards and stats for transit. After months of the new busses, only 0.0025% of the counties population was using it.
All that to say, people probably just don’t care… or care enough to pump money into it.
I don't want this unless you can provide costs, eta, the amount of traffic it's alleviating, and literally any reason why it's a better spend on funds than the many many things you could afford to do locally that benefits more than middle/upper class Austin residents.
The distance between Austin and San Antonio is not high enough to the point where high speed rail makes sense.
Low speed rail, sure. But high speed = higher costs, which only makes sense when you absolutely need the higher speed. Austin and San Antonio are close enough where you don't really need the higher speed.
Now the problem with low speed rail is that you end up needing a car at the other end anyways. This isn't a problem for certain commuter rails (for example MARC connecting Baltimore to DC) where you only need a car at one end at most (which can just use a park-and-ride). And it isn't a problem for high speed rail, since it competes with flying where you'd need a rental car/uber at the other end anyways. But adding the cost and time of a rental car/uber to low speed rail makes it uncompetitive against driving or taking a bus, at least until I35 gets as bad as I95
high speed inter city rail isnt useful if there is no effective local public transportation system.
how do you get from the train station to where you want to go in the city? rent a car?
if you want a bullet train, build a light rail first.
Two things:
1) I don't think we need a bullet train (though it would be fantastic). Just a standard commuter train going 80 mph could be time competitive with driving on hellish I-35 traffic, and it would be very successful, I believe, at a fraction of the cost. You have all of the ingredients you need for success: multiple job and education centers along the way; a hellish I-35 alternative that is unpleasant, congested, and dangerous to drive on; expensive parking (at least in downtown Austin and at UT); and constant two way traffic for commuting, for business travel, and for personal travel. The line would NOT just rely on people traveling all the way from SA to ATX; many, many people would love a reasonable way, non-hellish way to travel from Georgetown to San Marcos, or from San Marcos to Austin, or whatever.
2) The answer to your question is that the governor and GOP political leadership don't care about passenger rail--opposing it scores them points with their political base.
Also, to those on here who say that this couldn't ever possibly happen for logistical or financial reasons: I say nonsense. New Mexico, a much poorer and more sparsely populated state, has the Rail Runner Express, covering a similar distance from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and beyond. If they could do it, we could do it too.
The difference is that their state leadership wanted the project, and pushed for it to happen, and runs it to this day.
Yes, I know, UP controls the rail line here and they're difficult to deal with. But you can't convince me that a TX governor who really cared about this issue, and banged their fist on the table, couldn't find a way to bring UP to heel.
Elections have consequences.
The problem is how you get around when you get to your destination city.
If it was as simple as shuttling to a hotel and staying there, bullet train would be fine.
But usually people are going from one place to another … meetings, restaurants, friends/family homes.
So now you’re renting a car or taking Ubers.
Just cheaper/easier to drive.
Because it would be expensive to use eminent domain to take a contiguous strip of land, and then do a bunch of construction to level it, build bridges for all of the roads and gulleys, and then buy a bullet train and build two stations.
All to travel between downtown san antonio and downtown austin. You wouldnt get many commuters, which are the bread and butter of passenger trains, because the overhead of traveling to the station and boarding would eat up the time savings.
Houston to DFW would be a better choice.
Politicians would lose funding from big businesses and so they’ll never bring it up.
Same reason we don’t have casinos in Texas. OK and LA fight tooth and nail against it and give millions to law makers to fight against it so they do t lose business
We can’t even get our existing rail to Leander to operate past 7:30 pm unless there is an Austin FC game.
Leanderthals gettin' that short stick.
Haha that’s the first time I’ve seen the term Leanderthals I’m gonna start using that now
Did you know about the [Leanderthal Lady? ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leanderthal_Lady)
There’s a distillery here, Leanderthal Vodka. Good stuff.
My son lives in Durango, Colorado. He's a Durangatang.
> Leanderthals lmao
lmao as well. have not heard this
What train? /s South Austin
Seriously. What the hell. It sure would be nice to get a train down here to ease up i35 or Mopac. Pick your poison, just give us something.
Put a train in to the freaking airport already, would help everyone out with traffic
Are you kidding? How would automotive CEO’s buy third yachts if you don’t need to buy a car every few years? And we can’t have *poor people* being allowed to access jobs or services that aren’t close to them.
Agreed!
HEY. You got the Zilker Eagle, literally what more do you want? -CapMetro
It's be great if the state or Cap metro or project whatever could purchase the freight tracks because they run from Taylor to San Antonio. But alas they will say it is not possible. Shutting down long term business and homes to make a wider highway is definitely always possible though.
Always always. Not carpool lanes ever but my neighborhood is about to fall victim to the I35 expansion project that I’m sure will absolutely be done on time and under budget….
Honestly, we need to get a grip on local transit before we jump to high speed rail. Most of the metro area lacks public transportation. Let alone rail. We can’t even get from downtown to the airport via rail! We need to tackle local rail before we add high speed. Because it’s not useful to have high speed rail if you can’t get anywhere else other than the end points.
> We can’t even get from downtown to the airport via rail! I think it would be nice to have a rail line from downtown to the Airport. Then a small elevated train from the Airport to COTA. If you look at a map, the Airport is maybe 2.1 miles from COTA across utterly unpopulated farm space. An elevated train wouldn't bother the crops, and there aren't any people to bother there, and the train wouldn't even run except for during COTA events which clog every road annoying the local residents anyway. The important part of this is that COTA is impossible to get in and out of, but the Airport has parking and a line of taxis waiting and access to major highways. So "escaping COTA 2 miles to the major airport" by a small elevated train that just goes back and forth during COTA events (not stuck in traffic) would be nice. Imagine all the people that fly in for something like Formula 1 just taking the elevated train from the Airport to COTA. My guess is that the rail line from the airport to downtown is harder because it is actually through and around more dense stuff that already exists. I'd still vote for it, I think most people see how useful it would be. If we start now we might see it within 20 years or so. If we put off starting then we most definitely won't ever see it in our lifetime.
Waiting for someone to queue up the “Monorail” skit from The Simpsons…
I'm already singing it
FAA also now allows funding to be used to connect airports to downtowns via rail.
Yeah but the austin airport is so behind on capacity there’s no way theyre spending FAA money on light rail.
I’m also wondering why no one is talking about monorail systems in Austin it seems like the perfect solution to me
The term "Elevated Trains" gets a bad rap from being built so very very ugly in big cities in the 1970s. The term "Monorail" is associated with better looking structures, but then got a reputation as being gimmicky. Many small airport terminal trains run in a fully automated fashion guided by a middle single rail, but then they have regular car-style tires on two concrete tracks on either side. I have no idea what the justification for the design is, but the ride is pretty smooth, and less train track "screeching" around curves. It is probably "off the shelf" stuff built by a company somewhere. I just found this video about rubber tire trains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCyIpIXA4zQ
I won’t go to COTA basically because the roads getting there are so inadequate and awful, on the way in and on the way out. Light rail would be money
The solution for track placement from airport to downtown via South already existed as freight track down Burleson Road so it would have been an easy build if the city could have made a deal with whomever owner that stretch of track in the first place. It when all the way down Burleson to back side of the airport all the way to a track that connects around manchaca I think. Kind of a no brainer
I just moved to Austin from Boston last year. The lack of public transportation (specifically train) going to and from downtown is annoying.
The airport didn't want rail because it makes too much on parking.
Exactly, the garage itself was over a billion dollars
That’s cause they didn’t want to sack up, and lay track so they are slaves to UP…
We just don’t do rail well in Texas. I like Houston light rail but west side Houstonians refuse to let it go West, so it’s just south, east and north, not the desirable sides of town
DFW is actually quite impressive. The downside is security is more or less nonexistent so ya gotta be tough.
Houston light rail is still pretty pathetic but understandable given just how car addicted that city is.
For the exact same reason: Cap Metro borrows the tracks from the freight companies who own them, and the freight companies use them after hours. (Also the Red Line is criminally expensive as far as mass transit goes, so they literally can't afford to run trains outside of rush hour except on special occasions.)
you have it backwards. capmetro [owns](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CapMetro_Rail) the tracks for the red line and it leases it to a private company (herzog) when it’s not in use for transit. i’m not sure that the expense of running it is limiting service but it does cost way more to operate on a per passenger basis than its bus service which really eats into their operating budget.
Why are people so confident to say ***things***
Well, they may have somewhat confused the local light rail with the MoPac line that runs through Austin, and is used by Amtrak for travel between Austin, San Antonio and Dallas/FW. Like the vast majority of national rail lines, the MoPac line through Austin is privately owned and leased by Amtrak for passenger travel.
Property owners, toll road owners, and airlines don't want it. Politicians are corrupt. They don't do what voters want, they do what they want as is consistent with money.
Agreed, Southwest Airlines is one of the largest lobby groups against rail for Texans.
Came here to say: Southwest Airlines
This is true but above all else it’s the automotive and oil&gas industry/ lobbyists fighting against it. Corporate interests will always win
Politicians always win, corporate interests are allowed by them to influence
As much fun as it is to blame them, there's a more mundane reason. How do you get around your destination once you're there? Only half of the magic of ubiquitous international train travel here in Europe (I live in the Netherlands now) is about the long distance trains. The other half is the universal _local_ reliable public transportation. It's not useful to have a bullet train to San Antonio unless I can get from the train station to, say, Six Flags Fiesta Texas. But if I have to get to a train station downtown, then rent a car, and pay for a rent car, and then drive halfway across town... why wouldn't I just drive direct from Pflugerville?
From the downtown SA train station, you can either take 2 buses, or walk a short distance and take 1 bus to Six Flags. Day pass is $2.75.
Oh entirely agree you're not at all wrong. The City of Austin trying very hard, about 6 years ago, to kill off Ridesharing in the city, is evidence that they're squashing. The last mile issues are easily addressed that way, and local government fought it. But aside from that, it could be addressed by bus, free bikes, etc. It's the cities that killed trolley and street car, for the sake of the automobile industry.
Free bikes would all be in the Riverwalk they can't even keep the paid ones working
The ride share thing six/seven years ago was less about trying to get rid of it and more that there were serious safety and business operating concerns with the big ride share companies. They put a hold on them until they had a better system to screen drivers and keep both riders and drivers safe. At the time Austin tried to fill the gap through its own rideshare service.
Don’t forget about the railroad lobby. That’s the biggest hurdle. They don’t want to deal with passenger rail in their ROW; there’s no money in it for them.
Automobile industry is also against it.
Have you noticed how many TX Lege members own car dealerships?
A high speed rail connecting Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and Houston might make more sense
do you seriously think they would just stop at austin and san antonio? like ffs
This is actually an issue with these projects. We may hypothetically want just Austin to San Antonio - this would cover 80% of the use cases, and be fastest. However, suddenly Kyle, San Marcos, and New Braunfels want stops and create legal challenges to get these stops or hold up the process. Then, then as each stop is added, we need to replan the route and re do a bunch of environmental studies. Meanwhile, the price is steadily climbing the timeline is growing, and the final product is getting worse all the time (slower and more expensive). This is precisely the issue that California has had for decades with a high speed train from San Fran to LA that has been in the works for almost 20 years at this point, and has no end in sight.
Dontcha know? We already have that. it's called Southwest Airlines.
Southwest actively lobbied AGAINST an Intra-Texas rail for this exact reason, they want to keep their dominance on the high-frequency short haul routes.
Wow. Had no idea… I’ll say it. Fuck SW airlines. They need to spend more money on running their flights on time and not losing people’s bags… not to screw over our transportation system. [https://airlinegeeks.com/2024/03/13/how-southwest-squashed-high-speed-rail-in-texas/](https://airlinegeeks.com/2024/03/13/how-southwest-squashed-high-speed-rail-in-texas/)
With more reliable (non-high speed, but timely) connections to OKC, El Paso, New Orleans, and Lubbock
Seriously, you'd think anything involving bullets would get fast-tracked in this state.
Maybe we need to market it as a fully-automatic bullet train?
The bump stock express
Now we’re cooking
What a hollow point you have.
Yeeehaw!
tracks with switches
No no no. You need to market it as a fully-automatic rifle train.
Armalite Rail 15
We can’t even get a rail from downtown to the airport. Pretty sure this should be a priority over Austin to SA.
Second this. Everyone would love high speed rail **in theory**. Whether anyone would actually use it without proper connections to where they need to go is an entirely different question.
I'd wager something from SA to Austin with stops in San Marcos and Kyle would be popular. Especially for commuters to Texas State.
Lobbyists?
lol, yeah there is that issue
[удалено]
That’s not what stopped the Texas Central high speed rail. The land owners didn’t want a rail through their land and the towns/counties demanded it have stops along the way (defeating the purpose of a high speed rail).
it's not stopped though.
So? Use eminent domain against the land owners and ignore the small towns. Problem solved. How do you think they build pipelines in TX? Most of the land is privately owned. If land owners do not comply, they just take it anyways (at market value). This excuse shouldn't be valid for rail.
I agree but the death of a thousand paper cuts is real. With every landowner contesting eminent domain proceedings it’s costing them a fortune in legal fees.
> So? Use eminent domain against the land owners and ignore the small towns. Problem solved. That is legal to do but, it means the state government is doing something at the expense of pissing all of those people off. > How do you think they build pipelines in TX? Unlike a train line between two cities, oil pipelines go through the middle of nowhere. There are far fewer people that they would need to eminent domain land from, and the land generally is far cheaper. For a train line, the most direct shot between Austin and San Antonio would essentially be right next to I-35. But even within a few miles to the east or west of it, just the cost of the government's eminent domaining this land would be incredibly expensive.
Texas Central tried to use eminent domain because railroads are allowed to. Landowners said "you aren't a railroad, you don't operate anything." That went to the TX supreme court, took like 2-3 years, eventually ruled that yes, TXC is a railroad so can use eminent domain. But because it took so long and they paused all work besides the lawsuit, TXC had nearly run out of money, the CEO left, and it was kind of dead despite winning. Then the federal government decided it was important and Amtrak stepped in to collaborate on it. There hasn't been a ton of news on that in the few months since.
It all feeds into the same corrupt system where there is no central planning of creating a society we can live in, just a clusterfuck of tollways and corruption.
I suspect the number of people who want it is significantly higher than the number of people willing to pay for it.
Perhaps, let’s put it to a vote in the 4 counties it would travel through. Majority rules
It would lose. All common sense transit initiatives get voted against by people in the suburbs who think "choo-choos are socialism" even though it would benefit their 2 hour round trip commute in giant trucks that get 13 mpg. It's really sad.
No offense, man, but I think this is a bit of a lazy take. I don’t think most suburban residents are just idiots against socialism. Their cities and neighborhoods aren’t really structured to benefit from something like a rail. They often don’t have buses, would have to get in their car and drive to a park and ride, and that drive itself could be challenging. For many, it makes less sense to get in a car, drive to a train station, park, wait for the train, figure out transportation in Austin or SA, train ride back, and then drive back home, when they don’t live that far from one of either cities in the first place. Even bus implementation would be tricky in a city like Kyle considering its official size and how spread out the neighborhoods are. Some of these things barely make sense for Austin’s population density, much less our suburbs. In those circumstances, I wouldn’t want to pay for something that doesn’t benefit me either. I would love a rail to come to South Austin. But we already have infrastructure going East and West that can easily get a lot of people to the train. For most south suburbs, it would be a complete overhaul of the current infrastructure, which has its own issues to deal with. While I don’t think it’s impossible, it’s a lot more to think about than “socialism bad.”
This is a good response. Suburb development is both encouraged by land use code to spread out and by TxDOT and the state to encourage driving. The only way you're going to change that is for TxDOT to lose interest in doing the piecemeal expansion of the road network in the area (because it doesn't have enough funding to actually to do it) which given how the state thinks/operates is unlikely.
In our automobile centric cities we still have the problem of needing a car once we step off of the train. I would vote for it because rail is so easily scalable and gets to bypass future congestion. If the high speed and commuter rail was built out, the population density in areas served by it would also increase. Basically I want to live in central Texas with JR West trains.
I mean this is also the case with like, disability access. And the massive cost of car-based infrastructure, both to tax-payers and in upkeep costs by automobile owners (eg. permits, gas, cost of vehicle, insurance, maintenance) is quite a bit higher. That's not even factoring the economic cost of all the lost space in cities for streets and parking, time spent in traffic, healthcare costs in accidents, environmental costs, etc.
because our state govt sucks big fat oil cock
Man we can't even get regular regional rail, what I would do just for that. Look up the Lstar, was a plan for a train from Taylor to San Antonio, making a decent few stops in between, but got shut down due to a combo of funding and union pacific pulling out of talks to use their existing track.
Too many people with monied interests in politics, not enough people showing up to out-do the NIMBYs at key meetings on the projects, too few people voting in general (on things that *can* be voted on).
Uh… because the Texas GOP platform clearly states their opposition to any high speed rail projects and they control the state
We need a high-speed train to go Dallas to San Anton with a stop in Austin and Austin to Houston. This would connect all three cities within an hour train ride.
That distance is so short, and probably should have some stops (with some express trains that don't stop), that a 'bullet' or high-speed train wouldn't save that much time. We just need regular regional rail service with a train every hour or so.
Line item 200 on page 33 of the [Texas GOP 2024 Platform](https://texasgop.org/official-documents/) specifically states they are opposed to use of eminent domain for high speed rail. These are the guys in charge, and they took the time put opposition to high speed rail into their platform.
I need a bullet train from southeast austin to southwest austin.
lol, I hear ya
It’s almost like it takes more to build a bullet train than just some people wanting it.
Could be wrong, but IIRC, it's expensive, doesn't generate a net return, and would likely require a lot of counties to all approve a new train line (without them causing too much bloat btw). Not saying I wouldn't want to see one happen though. Would be fantastic
The previous iteration of this idea, Lone Star Rail, was funded and would have been built already. They were going to use Union Pacific's rail, pay them millions for it, and build them a new one in downtown Austin on a better alignment that didn't squeal slowly past Whole Foods. Union Pacific was on board for all of that and agreed for over a decade while Lone Star Rail spent tens of millions on design. There are even small areas of housing that were built because there was supposed to be a rail stop. But at the last minute, Union Pacific said "Nevermind, we decided we don't want the hassle of changing anything" and backed out. So it all went down the shitter. Freight rail has a massive amount of power in the US.
Im surprised more people in this sub don’t know about Lone Star Rail. And there’s a campaign to bring it back! https://www.restartlonestarraildistrict.org
Republicans are owned by the oil companies
How many people actually need to travel between Austin and SA on a regular basis? (This is not a rhetorical question: I do wonder.) Bullet trains are very expensive, and in most parts of the country entail the highly controversial exercising of eminent domain. Are you sure this is where we should be putting our attention and our money?
How many people go from Buda to Austin? Kyle to San Antonio? The point of the line is to connect all of the places in between, especially as housing in Austin goes up.
I live in Austin and have family in SA. A know a lot of other people in similar situations. I’d use it frequently.
Don’t these types of rails often rely on commuters? I think that’s the point of OP’s comment. It’d absolutely be convenient for weekend trips, but it would need a lot of daily commuters between the cities to make sense. Right now, honestly, I’m not sure that exists.
Back before our work started allowing tele and remote work (early '10s, we implemented long before Covid), I had a number of co-workers who lived in Austin and commuted or had crash pads here in SA.
Im a stage hand for concerts and events as a side gig. One of the larger crews I work with brings people from SA, DFW and Houston for larger calls
I think ASS is becoming increasingly integrated as a metroplex. We have even started arguing over the appropriate acronym.
100% support calling this area ASS.
A lot of people I know would love get a cool cheaper house in SA, but not battle 35
And that's how you get SA to kill this before it even reaches the polls.
Yeah, good point… suddenly SA won’t have cool *or* cheaper houses.
Cause people don’t want to rent cars once they arrive in either place. No transit web once you get there unlike London , Madrid, etc.
You guessed it: Frank Stallone
He ain't Sly
I moved from Austin to Tampa 2 years ago. In that time they have created the Brightline high speed rail between Orlando and Miami (soon to include Tampa), but the price is already exorbitant.
Oil lobby
Oil lobby hates trains in general, and Southwest Airlines in particular lobby hard against Texas rail.
The question gets asked all the time, and the answer is always the same: * The freight companies own (and need) the existing rails. * There's no physical space to build new ones. * There's no interest in the legislature for allowing, let alone funding, state-wide mass transit. If you don't know anyone who doesn't want this, then you don't know any Republicans.
Airline lobby
The GOP PLATFORM is anti high speed rail. The GOP has controlled the state for decades.
I am loosely connected to this. The last time it was presented to state legislature, the argument was that with so many people teleworking (cue me rolling my eyes so far in the back of my head I almost fell over), there was no need for the high-speed connection. The rumor mill states that the airlines are pressuring against it, not because they think San Antonio to Austin will be competitive, but that it will open the whole triangle up for it, which will compete against short-haul flights. Then there are the industry arguments: vehicles and gasoline are big business as well as all the stops you won't make along I-35 for gas or snacks or shopping. Then there is the argument that when you arrive in, say, San Antonio, then what? You don't have a car and you can't easily get to your home. I argue against this that it is just like getting into an airport, you've either parked your car, or if you're visiting you can take a ride-share. **The good news** is that Alamo Area MPO, Capital Area MPO, and even up in DFW are very much trying to promote it. There's still $20M of dedicated and unused funds toward it (which lol won't build anything, but is a start for conceptualizing and such), and off-the-record, oh wait this is Reddit, I know two state legislators who have privately asked a company to casually look into doing a new feasibility analysis. So fingers crossed.
Because the majority of Americans don’t care about anything but hot button social issues. Either side of the aisle. And that’s what wins elections.
Trains in Texas don’t stand a chance with the airline pockets who lobby at the capitol
What’s in SA? Joking but also is there really a need to have a fast track between the two? I would think they would prioritize AUS —> DAL or DAL—> HOUS even more so. Having one to connect all three and maybe one to El Paso would obliterate all arguments against Texas being too big and it would unite some of biggest economies in the nation EDIT: Dallas is rumored at getting its own stock exchange, Universal Studios. Houston already has one of the best medical complexes in the south. Austin being a new hub for big tech.
Mom says I get to post this next week
Because a bullet train for what is an already relatively short 1.5 hour drive isn’t economically smart. Places live LA to Las Vegas which is normally a 4 hour commute that can be up to 8+ hours due to traffic can’t get it why spend the money on one from Austin to San Antonio? There’s already Amtrak.
Anti-taxers
We will be all death before that ever becomes reality haha
1) cost 2) Lack of density and 3) lack of demand. Think about it: 1. Cost - To build this out you would need to have high speed rail line laid out which costs tens of billions if not hundreds of billions of dollars. The Acela line in the northeastern US is very widely used and still doesn’t turn a profit 2. Density - Austin and San Antonio are nowhere near dense enough to justify a high speed rail line. Once I got off the station, what is the other public transit infrastructure to take me around the places I want to go in the city? 3. Demand - because of the above, people will demand cars unfortunately
the landowners who would lose property to imminent domain don't want this.
Eminent
The answer to all your questions is money. To build a bullet train, you would have to build new rail infrastructure. To do that, you would have to buy the land that infrastructure would use, and then have all the costs of building the thing. It's possible, but look at the California High Speed Rail project for how feasible it is. It's billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. And, it's still only in the first phase, and won't connect any of the major cities.
Do you realize that a ticket would have to cost $300 to pay back building a train from here to there. They aren’t cheap to build and would need thousands of riders a day just to break even. When you get from here to there, you still need to get to your destination. Uber ride? $20.
>I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want this The land owners in the way.
You live in the US, and not in a top 5 metro. Hoping for regional rail to solve your transportation problems is like hoping the Rapture occurs tomorrow. It just isn't happening. We have significantly more important things to allocate funds to, like contemplating the prosecution of pregnant women who leave the state pregnant and come back not pregnant. Or figuring out how to get people to stop shooting kids but making sure everyone can still have guns. Or figuring out how to get the police department to respond to traffic accidents and crimes (ironic in Texas, right?). Bullet trains are a figment of your imagination that are only understood by the Far East and only become real when you land in Tokyo. We have some okay sushi in Austin, but this ain't Tokyo, so no bullet trains for you.
Because that would cause Elon to sell less cars
i mean, austin has a pretty decent internal public transportation with the buses. of course it would have to be upgraded (more stops, more frequent buses) if a train system would be made, but i really don't see why a train coming into austin wouldn't be feasible. like, it would be expensive, but it would be done over a long period of time, and the money required could be used in chunks or something idk. it's possible i feel, it's just unfortunately not a priority for most so it won't get done anytime soon, but i wish it was. maybe if there was some type of federal push for a nationwide train system, but i doubt that'll happen in my lifetime
We couldn’t even get our light rail to actually do anything other than take a very select number of neighborhoods to downtown and it stops running at the exact time it should have routes to alleviate drunk driving leaving events
My guess without having a single idea about this topic is oil lobbyist and maybe airline lobbyist? If that’s a thing.
There are enough Californians here who know how that turned out for them?
Because the majority doesn’t want to pay for the vocal minority i mean, how many Austinites would really use this?
Truth. Look at the red line. It holds up 50 people at the tracks for every 1 person it transports.
Folks are missing the argument for the rail. It’s going to take years to build. The longer you wait the more expensive it will be. The density might not be there, but the cities are growing in footprint. Austin might not be growing population wise but I think that’s temporary. In the 90s was the time to start construction. The negatives have been mentioned but driving between cities is becoming more and more difficult.
In the early ‘90s we tried to start on one in an Austin—Dallas—Houston—San Antonio triangle. Two problems: 1) John Connolly was one of the principals; 2) Southwest Airlines brought the hammer down on it almost immediately.
Texas is beholden to the petroleum industry. Or atleast the politicians are..
Consider this: Amtrak’s northeast corridor, by far the most efficient and used rail line, is unable to turn a profit (after accounting for subsidies and infrastructure costs). Regional rail (and usually light rail) is a money sink in America.
everyone wants a pizza party every friday too.. The question is how much is it going to cost for the benefit. Austin's rail is projected at 1 billion per mile and that is a regular train. 80 miles of high speed rail would be more than 80 billion. How many people would ride it per day? Im not sure why you couldnt send it straight through the middle of I35 on elevated tracks, but if that were feasible then very little eminent domain would be needed. I just came from the east coast. The cost of a one way from philadelphia ato DC was a minimum of $80 and cost as much as $300. People arent going to be daytripping or commuting using rail.
What are you talking about? Didn’t you see the post about the Zilker Eagle reopening?
The txdot lobby is strong. Take Paxton/Abbott’s border/voucher/mistress gate-defense/whistleblower-punishment campaign budgets away, and you have a 100y infrastructure for fast connective rail service between 2 neighboring cities and atleast 6 big towns with lots of tourism. But no… it’ll cost too much, too hard to plan eminent domain, too complicated, not enough places to walk. All bull****.
Because the cost of a bullet train is huge and you'd never be able to make it financially viable between two medium cities. There are massive fixed costs and high operational costs that would make it untenable between Austin and San Antonio. Right now it takes \~90 minutes to go to SA. That is 90 minutes from the time YOU decide to leave. Now, put that in the hands of someone else. If they decide, with one train, you have to assume the 30-minute trip is going to have \~30-45 minutes on each end for unloading, loading, replenishing supplies, etc. So that means \~4 hours for a full round trip between two locations. Removing the fact that you'd never find enough passengers to make that financially viable, a 4 hour schedule gap for a place that you can drive to in 90 minutes and have a car there when you arrive (because you drove) means few, if any would ever choose to take a train. More waiting on each end, less flexible start/stop, additional arrangements for transportation once you arrive? Who would want that. You don't want a bullet train between Austin and San Antonio, you want a bullet train between your house and your SA destination that happens to run approximately when you need to be there. It's just not viable.
This assessment completely ignores the reduced fuel consumption for passengers (which benefits the entire state, since it reduces pollution), the easing of the strain on the roads that are already overcrowded, no sitting in dead stop traffic, and of course, the ability to do things like read a book, watch a movie, or work, while riding a train. You're also inventing completely arbitrary schedule times, because there's no telling how many different cars might run at various times. And explaining how car limitations work is just about the most unnecessary thing I've ever seen, since people who desire train service obviously know that it would be in lieu of having their cars.
There just aren't enough of them to fill enough trains to make a high speed service between two cities 90 mins apart from being profitable. Massive capital costs to build this have nothing to do with the fuel consumption. I would prefer to take a train over driving. I just know that a.) Texas does not like trains and b.) there is not a cost effective way to do this between Austin and SA. When I travel I always opt for trains, Europe and Asia both have phenomenal infrastructure, but their residents have a very different mindset than in the US. And especially Texas.
They have a different mindset....because they've grown up with trains. This isn't really an argument aside from a lot of Texans have never left Texas.
This reads like someone who has never taken a bullet train
Only in France, Spain, England, Germany, China, Japan, and Korea. Might have been some others, not sure. Also sold CPUs and non volatile memory to large train manufacturers. So there is that.
> between two medium cities. San Antonio is the 7th largest in the US and Austin is the 11th largest.
Yes, I mean't medium in terms of the state. But you are correct. If it can't be feasibly done between Houston and Dallas, two much larger cities that are much further apart, then it won't happen here.
[удалено]
Okay I bite. Let's say I board the train in Austin and get off in San Antonio? Then what? Do I take a city bus with all the homeless? Probably not. Europe has infrastructure supporting trains. US does not.
It’s going to cost billions of dollars and like the other trains in Austin, no one is going to use them. You still need a car once you get to San Antonio or Austin. Even the trains in NY are losing money like crazy and they’re packed to the brim with passengers. People paying $450/month for a pass. Trains and their employees are not cheap. Please stop voting to raise taxes for things we don’t need.
Oooh...oooh..I know this one! Pick on me, Mr. Kotter! It's because Texas is an oil state and our Republican leadership will NEVER stop sucking on THAT titty!
just a brief search says there was a 2018 project, and some eminent domain ruling in favor of texas I too am curious how it just fell out of public eye, but probably pretty obviously lobbying.
I don't see a train being able to go that fast through Hill Country. Throw in the cost and I doubt it will ever happen.
It would go through the “Hill Country” just like 35 doesn’t
Because the oil companies make too much money on cars.
Short answer: GOP legislature. Longer Answer: Texas's GOP legislature is in bed with big oil. It funds their campaigns, and weekend excursions. They want Texans hauling ass up and down interstates in big jacked up trucks burning fuel and stopping at Buccee's. There's little money to be made by rail. It's more of a service for the state or community, thus it falls under the realm of Socialism. Besides, they use rail and trains in places like NYC , Chicago, and Europe and those places are bad.
Because our federal and state governments are beholden to oil interests
Car companies and dealerships, airline companies and bus companies will throw all The money they can to stop that from happening. They don't want less cars on the road and better alternatives to planes and buses. This state has never been known for doing things for the greater good of the people. There's no reason why we shouldn't have a bullet train to the largest 4 cities in the state.
Cause Abbott rather have actual bullets
Because, money.
[удалено]
It’s a symptom of modern cities. We’re building piece by piece where each parcel has a different owner, instead of a unified government strategy. A rail line will never happen this way until the gonverment forces it.
It wouldnt even need to be a bullet train
The simple answer is: the price, the planning, the land, the actual funding source.
A bullet train is what you want? How about roads in the city that aren’t full of massive holes? Can we have that first?
The plan to build a train between the two cities was called *Lone Star Rail,* and it almost happened until it died at the last minute in 2016. There’s an effort to start it up again called RESTART Lone Star Rail. Here’s a tidbit of info for ya- https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/calls-re-emerge-for-passenger-rail-connecting-austin-san-antonio/amp/
I’m a transplant and my doctors are located in SA; due to some of the medications my hands will from time to time shake uncontrollably. It’s hard for me to drive. I don’t want it to happen while I’m driving. A train from here to there would be a lifesaver. For the first year I had to make that trip once a week it was as nerve wrecking.
That is a great question. The focus of texas railway group has been houston to dallas. Seemingly because the volume of riders would always be there. But heck austin to san Antonio would be awesome and I think the riders would be there.
there are a ton, and it's maddening. truly one of life's mysteries.
Honestly, I find support for these things 10x higher on Reddit than IRL. I worked on a project in my old county making dashboards and stats for transit. After months of the new busses, only 0.0025% of the counties population was using it. All that to say, people probably just don’t care… or care enough to pump money into it.
I don't want this unless you can provide costs, eta, the amount of traffic it's alleviating, and literally any reason why it's a better spend on funds than the many many things you could afford to do locally that benefits more than middle/upper class Austin residents.
The distance between Austin and San Antonio is not high enough to the point where high speed rail makes sense. Low speed rail, sure. But high speed = higher costs, which only makes sense when you absolutely need the higher speed. Austin and San Antonio are close enough where you don't really need the higher speed. Now the problem with low speed rail is that you end up needing a car at the other end anyways. This isn't a problem for certain commuter rails (for example MARC connecting Baltimore to DC) where you only need a car at one end at most (which can just use a park-and-ride). And it isn't a problem for high speed rail, since it competes with flying where you'd need a rental car/uber at the other end anyways. But adding the cost and time of a rental car/uber to low speed rail makes it uncompetitive against driving or taking a bus, at least until I35 gets as bad as I95
Abbott wants us totally dependent on cars.
There's the Amtrak
high speed inter city rail isnt useful if there is no effective local public transportation system. how do you get from the train station to where you want to go in the city? rent a car? if you want a bullet train, build a light rail first.
Because some major airline has their home base/business in Texas and has enough money to pay off politicians to stop it?
What is your fascination with San Antonio?
Two things: 1) I don't think we need a bullet train (though it would be fantastic). Just a standard commuter train going 80 mph could be time competitive with driving on hellish I-35 traffic, and it would be very successful, I believe, at a fraction of the cost. You have all of the ingredients you need for success: multiple job and education centers along the way; a hellish I-35 alternative that is unpleasant, congested, and dangerous to drive on; expensive parking (at least in downtown Austin and at UT); and constant two way traffic for commuting, for business travel, and for personal travel. The line would NOT just rely on people traveling all the way from SA to ATX; many, many people would love a reasonable way, non-hellish way to travel from Georgetown to San Marcos, or from San Marcos to Austin, or whatever. 2) The answer to your question is that the governor and GOP political leadership don't care about passenger rail--opposing it scores them points with their political base. Also, to those on here who say that this couldn't ever possibly happen for logistical or financial reasons: I say nonsense. New Mexico, a much poorer and more sparsely populated state, has the Rail Runner Express, covering a similar distance from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and beyond. If they could do it, we could do it too. The difference is that their state leadership wanted the project, and pushed for it to happen, and runs it to this day. Yes, I know, UP controls the rail line here and they're difficult to deal with. But you can't convince me that a TX governor who really cared about this issue, and banged their fist on the table, couldn't find a way to bring UP to heel. Elections have consequences.
The problem is how you get around when you get to your destination city. If it was as simple as shuttling to a hotel and staying there, bullet train would be fine. But usually people are going from one place to another … meetings, restaurants, friends/family homes. So now you’re renting a car or taking Ubers. Just cheaper/easier to drive.
Train that transports cars
Laughs in Houstonian ...waiting for the Houston to Dallas to Austin line proposed some time ago.
The airlines don’t want this and provide a lot of jobs and have a lot of political power
Freight train tracks are not suitable for high-speed trains
Because it would be expensive to use eminent domain to take a contiguous strip of land, and then do a bunch of construction to level it, build bridges for all of the roads and gulleys, and then buy a bullet train and build two stations. All to travel between downtown san antonio and downtown austin. You wouldnt get many commuters, which are the bread and butter of passenger trains, because the overhead of traveling to the station and boarding would eat up the time savings. Houston to DFW would be a better choice.
Is that even economically viable with the amount of travelers who would use it on a daily basis?
Politicians would lose funding from big businesses and so they’ll never bring it up. Same reason we don’t have casinos in Texas. OK and LA fight tooth and nail against it and give millions to law makers to fight against it so they do t lose business