Yes please. Why isn't this already here?

https://www.texascentral.com/


Connecting Houston with Dallas in 90 minutes with one stop @ Brazos Valley near [ish] to College Station.




I wish their would be a line running along 35 from Fort Worth through Waco, Austin, San Antonio and Corpus Christi. Imagine going from Cowtown to the coast in about 2 hours instead of 6 hours.

And maybe they will cover the Texas Triangle. Or there could be spurs off to different cities from the Brazos Valley station.







A high speed rail system + modern nuclear reactors for each of the major cities = das it mane

Careful what you wish for:https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/u...-politics.html

These usually just turn into ways to launder money for Pols and their donors.

Who the hell wants to go to Dallas ever? Worst place in America.

Hell no. For the past few years we've been told that it would be built entirely with private money. Then that money ran out and now they're buddying up with Amtrak for some of those sweet tax dollars. They already owe $600K in unpaid property taxes.

What do you once you get to where the train's going? Rent a car?

Have they tried embracing liberalism and handing out ubi to the immigrants than raising taxes on tortillas?

From the video this project is an easier less expensive build, which I can believe because there is a heckuva a lot of mostly empty land here still. I drove through a good bit of it just recently...places where there isn't even anyplace to pull over or turn around so you better not run out of gas or have any kind of emergency.

I had my first encounter with this chain of gas stations that are like mini Buccee's on this trip. They have chosen good locations from what I could tell. Places where two fairly busy roads intersect and in between is a lot of nothing much.



https://thetexanstores.com/locations/


I also happened to a new Buccee's under construction in Hillsboro. Wasn't on purpose...my fuel gauge light came on and I was still an hour out from home. I'm not sure about this location choice. There is no north bound on ramp. You have to head south to catch 35 and then exit/re-enter to get on the road going north. It is right on top of the 35E/35W split where the road divides for Fort Worth and Dallas. Looks like it could be open by Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I'd like to rail you katya - no disrespect

A lot of projects are a BS waste of money no doubt. But if this ever actually happens and reaches its full potential I believe that there would be real lasting value for Texans.

- less traffic on connecting highways [maintenance, policing, emergency services]

- ability to choose from multiple airports for flights...particularly if there is a connection through to all the big cities and DFW airport which is an international hub

- competitive advantage vs. other states for attracting business investment

- expanded options for tourism...fly in to DFW, visit top attractions around the state

I don't care how it gets paid for, though of course I do care that it isn't done poorly or wastefully. I believe that it would increase prosperity and reduce the number of highway fatalities which are awful here.
Yes. Or use uber. Or hotel shuttles. Or have friends/family in the area.

It won't reach full potential - they never do. Not only will we be subsidizing the construction up front, but it will never make money and the tax payers will be throwing money at it forever. This is only like the 10th time something like this has been proposed, they always use pie in the sky ridership rates, and they still project losses. I honestly couldn't care less if some private developer wants to throw their own money away on something like this, but keep my money out of it.

Remember the Trans-Texas Corridor? Wonder why we never hear about that anymore. Oh that's right - they canned it after 10 years of throwing money at studies and planning.

So it would just be for tourists, for the most part? I haven't looked in a while, but until car rentals go back to $15 a day it would be really expensive, or very inconvenient. Same with uber, it was like $40 to get from the airport the last time I flew somewhere, and I'm not even that far from the airport.

As far as getting to DFW to get better flights, you can already do that flying out of the smaller airports here, unless this train would be way cheaper than one of those flights.

Well I'm on the other side I guess. I'm sick to death of all the toll roads everywhere. Like why are we paying all these fuel taxes and property taxes and license and registration fees and then we still have to pay to use a road???

I despise how 35W was done here near me. Only 2 free lanes each way, a center lane with variable charges, and outright dangerous traffic planning. I'm vaguely curious how many people have died on the section between Fort Worth and Denton since they began construction.I don't believe that planning these corridor right of ways in advance was a waste, but don't know why it had to involve private investment or why they ditched it.
No, there isn't any reason it would have to be "just for tourists". There is a lot of travel between the cities by residents. One of the points mentioned in the video was that there is a high population of college students within a fairly short drive of the Brazos Valley station.

Due to the present security measures you have to add an hour or two to the flight time to travel between the cities by plane.

The flight time from Dallas to San Antonio is only an hour and 10 minutes, but once you add travel time to the airport [30 minutes?] plus time for check in and security and boarding [surely around 2 hours all in] you could easily be at 3 hours 40 minutes.

The drive time is only 4 hours and 30 minutes.

High speed rail could be around 2 hours.

If you drive then you have your car to use at your destination. But you also have to deal with the stress of driving between the two cities which isn't nothing. Fort Worth to Waco isn't bad. Somewhere after Waco it gets heavy and hectic and stays that way.

I just don't see this working all that well, especially not in Texas of all places. Maybe on the east coast where there are more dense cities, but even there, outside of NYC public transportation is usually garbage or not that safe. Car rentals/uber/taxis are all really expensive, especially now in the post-lockdown world.

I don't really see how driving is more stressful than the train or flying either. It's the one option where you don't have to worry about being somewhere at an exact time or you're SOL. If I'm trying to get to DFW or Houston for an international flight, my whole day is already probably gone anyway, saving an hour wouldn't make that big of a difference, and that's assuming getting from the train station to the airport is extremely easy and fast.

Like others have mentioned in this thread, this just seems like a way for some people to pick up a lot of contracts with the government on something that will probably cost a fortune and end up a waste like Amtrak is now. This works in Europe and Asia, but we're not Europe or Asia. You'd have to knock all the cities down here and start from scratch the way they're built, especially in Texas.

I'm actually fine with the tolls. At least that way the electric cars are paying their share too.

Now you'll get to pay for the train whether you ride it or not.

I 100% agree with this.

Just because you find driving less stressful doesn't mean everyone feels that way. Consider how expensive vehicle ownership has become and how many Gen Z don't seem to have any interest in even learning how to drive.

I think you underestimate the population that is involved.

High speed rail seems to be working for Portugal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-s...il_in_Portugal

They have about 10 million in population across a land mass roughly the size of Indiana.



The Lisbon metro area is about 3 million, while the Porto metro area is under 2 million...about 3 hours travel time by high speed rail.

So consider that theDallas metro area is nearing 7.8 million people and the Houston metro area is a bit over 7 million people and they estimate a 2 hour travel time.

^^^
Shorter travel time and over 14 million in population vs. 5 million in population.


Only one survey so far as I can tell, and who knows about bias, but they estimate starting ridership of up to 6 million in 2029 ramping up to as many as 13 million passengers by 2050.

https://www.texascentral.com/ridership/

Well I'm pretty sure I paid for DFW Airport and Alliance Airport too and as a property owner/state resident had no say about that whether I fly in and out of DFW or purchase products that travel through Alliance.

I’d rather just nuke Austin and build bigger freeways with no speed limit

This is cool.

They’ll just need to start a few fires to grab up the land to finish it.

Brightline is supposed to be building a high speed train between LA and Las Vegas.

1- it will start about 40 miles from LA in Rancho Cucamonga.

2- It will go down the center of the current 15 freeway which will cause endless years of construction and lawsuits

3- It will need 6 brand new stations with parking, lights, the whole thing, in middle of the desert for some stupid reason.

4- It wont go all the way to Las vegas but stop about 10 miles from the strip.

5- It will go a blistering 80 mph.

6- It will be expensive to ride.

Keep in mind this is a private company thinking this stupid stuff up. imagine how bad the govt can bungle a similar project.

I dont dant a lot of hope for high speed rail like they have in other countries.

I've not been to Portugal, but if it's anything like Poland the cities are much more compact and easy to navigate, and public transportation isn't a chore to use. It's also very safe, unlike the few cities that have good public transportation here that I've used, mainly Chicago and NYC, both cities way more dense than anything here in Texas.

I saw an image of the state of Connecticut overlaying the city of Houston and they were roughly the same size. Population density here is very low in these cities. Houston has a population density of 3,160 per square mile, Dallas is 3,400/sq mi.

On the other hand Porto has a population density of 14,494/sq mi and Lisbon's is 14,104/sq mi. Those two cities are almost 5 times as densely populated as Dallas or Houston. This is why this stuff probably won't work here, you'd have to tear down the cities here in Texas and start over again, especially with the massive highway system.

LA to Vegas actually makes way more sense than anything like that in Texas, since Vegas is primarily a tourist destination, and most people either go to the Strip or Fremont Street, both of which are walkable.

Houston is a sh*thole, train will be completely covered in piss after 72 hours of it opening


El Paso is the new Old Houston

The density within the cities is a good argument for the viability of public transportation *within* a city, but I don't know about that as an argument for transportation between cities.

It is because you can easily hop on the subway/bus/walk once you get to wherever you're going, and your final destination probably won't require a car. If you take a train from Dallas to Houston odds are you'll need a car during your stay in either city, or it'll be a major pain in the butt. Not so in many European or Asian cities.

And this isn't a slight against Texas, I love this state, but it's different. I personally prefer having a car and a lot of room around me.