blindey said:

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AgCPA95 said:

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Satellite of Love said:

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The Houston Station is going to be a 290 and 610? SMFH....what a terrible spot to drop people in the city.

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it appears you would have huge parking garage attached - I would think most connecting traffic to the train would be personal car.

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wow. Total government boondoggle. The purpose is self-defeated ten steps away from the train platform.

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So the purpose was to eliminate local transportation in metro Houston? I saw this as an faster/easier alternative to flying and a much faster and safety alternative to driving. I believe a majority of folks will use personal cars, uber, buses and drop-offs from a central point. I don't think you will see high-speed rail delivering folks to the Heights, Bellaire, Sugarland, Katy and the like so central would seem like the best option versus drives to Hobby or Bush.

gindaloon said:

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The DMN article says the trip will be 90 minutes. That doesn't seem faster once you add the time it takes to get to/from the stations.

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Drive to Hobby over an hour early for parking/shuttle/security then the 45 minute flight to Dallas > Uber to 610/290 station and hop on train and get there in 90 minutes.

Not sure how the security will be but when I've taken trains in Europe you pretty much walk right on.

AgCPA95 said:

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blindey said:

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AgCPA95 said:

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Satellite of Love said:

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The Houston Station is going to be a 290 and 610? SMFH....what a terrible spot to drop people in the city.

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it appears you would have huge parking garage attached - I would think most connecting traffic to the train would be personal car.

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wow. Total government boondoggle. The purpose is self-defeated ten steps away from the train platform.

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So the purpose was to eliminate local transportation in metro Houston? I saw this as an faster/easier alternative to flying and a much faster and safety alternative to driving. I believe a majority of folks will use personal cars, uber, buses and drop-offs from a central point. I don't think you will see high-speed rail delivering folks to the Heights, Bellaire, Sugarland, Katy and the like so central would seem like the best option versus drives to Hobby or Bush.

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I've traveled to Europe over 20 times. I've rode more high-speed trains than I can count. They're great in plenty of situations. I just don't see the use-case here in Texas.

The travel time will be plus/minus 15-30 minutes of flying. There will be less hassle not dealing with TSA, but plenty of frequent fliers will stick with airlines for the status programs and mileage.

It will not be substantially cheaper than flying. ICE tickets for a 1-2 hour train ride are close to 100 Euro. Price-sensitive travelers like families will no doubt continue driving.

What is the fundamental competitive edge a high-speed train will have over other means of transportation? The answer is none. The other risk factor here is a high-speed train is a 25-50 year investment horizon. We've got self-driving cars in real-world testing right now. If those allow interstate speeds up to 90 MPH - which isn't crazy - then cars will surely beat the door-to-door travel time of either planes or trains.

Maybe this will help bring us together vato...



VS

AgCPA95 said:

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Satellite of Love said:

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The Houston Station is going to be a 290 and 610? SMFH....what a terrible spot to drop people in the city.

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It is fairly central to the greater Houston population and it appears you would have huge parking garage attached - I would think most connecting traffic to the train would be personal car.

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It may be central to the population, but unless you are getting dropped off at 2am on a Tuesday, any time you may have saved on your travels will be wasted due to the charlie-foxtrot that is daily traffic there. That doesn't include the charlie-foxtrot on steroids that is traffic between 7am and 1pm and 3pm and 7pm on weekdays. God forbid there is something like an accident too, that generally doesn't help matters.

I do not miss driving there on a daily basis (actually south of there, but from Braeswood to Bammel North is crap stacked on top of crap when talking about traffic. So, the entire west loop.

drumboy said:

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Really? I go past that 290 Metro place all the time commuting from ITL to Katy when I get off of the Managed Lanes and it's not bad for me. I do always tell my wife that traffic is horrendous and I'll stop by Warehouse/Cactus Cove or Hughies.

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Admittedly I don't (thankfully) make it north of 290 often, but the last few times I have - yeah, I would not define that traffic as anything other than "the suck". Maybe we have different perspectives. I am very familiar with the area south of 290 though, and it does decidedly blow sweaty Afghani goat balls, and any argument otherwise is silly.

At least it's safer than that cheap air travel option.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amtrak-train-derailment-washington-state-tacoma-2017-12-18-live-stream-updates/

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Amtrak train 501, which departed shortly before 8 a.m. local time from Tacoma, was part of a new high-speed service that launched Monday morning. The train is able to carry up to 250 people, but Amtrak said there were approximately 78 passengers, five crew members and one technician on board at the time.

The Cascades service from Seattle to Portland was supposed to be rated for a maximum speed of 79 mph for the section where it derailed in DuPont, according to passenger Chris Karnes. KIRO-TV reports the train was traveling at 81 mph moments before the derailment.

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The Cascades service from Seattle to Portland was supposed to be rated for a maximum speed of 79 mph for the section where it derailed in DuPont, according to passenger Chris Karnes. KIRO-TV reports the train was traveling at 81 mph moments before the derailment.

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Not much of a safety factor in there.

It will be end up being more like I-10 and 610 than 290 and 610.

http://www.texascentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Harris_County_5.pdf

Texas Central shows a siding at Northwest Mall, one at S&P Steel Products, and one at the Landry's warehouse/Northwest Transit Center. I assume this is so you can party with your cholos at Chapa, before taking the metro bus down to Pleasure Pier, but I'm not certain.

Not sidings. There are three station options taken into consideration. The one that makes by far the most sense from a transportation perspective is the third, IMO.

Why would we want to give Dallas a piece of the HOUSTON market? To me, we have mush more to lose with this deal.

joerobert_pete06 said:

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Why would we want to give Dallas a piece of the HOUSTON market? To me, we have mush more to lose with this deal.

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I think you've watched a bit too much Under Seige 2

Trains will never require TSA except through sheer paranoia.

A train can't be hijacked to go somewhere it's not intended to go. You can't get on one and order it to take you to Mexico. You can't take the controls and drive it into a building. If you get a realistic bomb on a plane everybody dies. If you bring a realistic bomb and get it on a train, a handful die. A passenger simply cannot gonna get a Timothy McVeigh Ryder truck in there with enough power to kill everybody. Also even just generally, when something goes bad on a plane, everybody dies. Even the worst train accidents don't kill everybody or even a majority of those on board. Although I'm not even sure that this particular style of train has any accident record to speak of. Let's say someone did want to blow up a train, the passengers and their baggage are not the weak point, so you don't need TSA screening of them. That person would simply blow up the train safely from somewhere far away or sabotage the tracks or whatever, because it's no secret when and where the train is gonna be. It's on a timetable and it can't leave a fixed track. Why try to get your bomb on board it at all?

Even in countries where people have tried crazy ****, like releasing Sarin gas or legitimately trying to blow up subway systems, I don't think the reaction has been to make everybody go through airline security. The reason is because it would be even more of a dumb meaningless show to do so than it is for planes.

Yes. Most of the most deadly however do not involve passengers but outside attacks or sabotage. Also, generally the ones that do involve passengers are on extremely high capacity urban trains of a different type.

The solution for Madrid for example, cannot be to make the 2 million in daily ridership go through airport security.

The same cannot be said for aircraft, where almost all of the biggest attacks are directly implemented by the passengers. There are only a handful of 50+ fatality incidents on your train list that were caused by the passengers. The list for airplanes though is extensive, with dozens of 50+ fatality bombings caused by passengers. Plus the risk of general passenger hijacking that doesn't really exist at all for trains, and also the potential for the deadliest terror attacks of all time.

You also have to consider the rates to analyze the costs and benefits. There are definitely more passenger terrorist incidents involving more deaths in air travel than rail travel, but it may not seem like "that many more" when you look at those lists. However, if you consider the rate per passenger, it'd be ludicrous to spend as much money screening passengers for rail as we do for air. Even if the number of incidents were exactly the same you have to consider that there are only 10,000,000 passengers worldwide flying every day while the number of train/metro passengers in a day is in the hundreds of millions, maybe even approaching 1 billion or more. On a single passenger level, a train passenger is significantly less risky than a plane passenger and that's even after you've put the airline passenger through much more rigorous security.

"Virtually everywhere high-speed rail has been constructed, financial liability has fallen to the taxpayers. In Taiwan and the United Kingdom, taxpayers assumed billions of dollars in private debts for much more modest high-speed-rail systems than Japan's." TCR claims it will be privately funded, if "private" means by using taxpayer funded and guaranteed loans since TCR hasn't even raised enough money to pay for a single train car, much less a mile of track.

https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/research--commentary-high-speed-rail-is-a-bad-option-for-states#.Wjjn1axNap8.facebook

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But safety is really a tertiary issue compared to the primary fact that high speed passenger rail is an expensive, redundant, antiquated, inefficient, eminent domain boondoggle.

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Agree on some of the issues. Especially cost and its going to be paid for.

However, I disagree completely that safety is even a tertiary issue. It wouldn't even be on a LONG list of most important things to worry about. It is just something that sounds like it could be right and plays on people's fears to try and throw weight on the negative side. Its a sign that someone is just invested in throwing out arguments to "stop boondoggle trains" rather than a sign they have done any kind of analytical thinking about what the problems really are.

Sounds like a problem with the government and TSA, not with trains.

As for Eurostar, I can't say what thats about. I'm guessing it's probably paranoia to protect any potential danger to the Channel Tunnel, which is their meal ticket. I imagine it is also MUCH more of a high profile (and expensive if damaged) target than most (and especially so compared to what would be high speed tracks in rural Texas), and also being a tunnel, one where the passengers are probably the biggest danger since the tracks aren't out in the open for just anybody who isn't a passenger to do something to.

JJxvi said:

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Trains will never require TSA except through sheer paranoia.

A train can't be hijacked to go somewhere it's not intended to go. You can't get on one and order it to take you to Mexico. You can't take the controls and drive it into a building. If you get a realistic bomb on a plane everybody dies. If you bring a realistic bomb and get it on a train, a handful die. A passenger simply cannot gonna get a Timothy McVeigh Ryder truck in there with enough power to kill everybody. Also even just generally, when something goes bad on a plane, everybody dies. Even the worst train accidents don't kill everybody or even a majority of those on board. Although I'm not even sure that this particular style of train has any accident record to speak of. Let's say someone did want to blow up a train, the passengers and their baggage are not the weak point, so you don't need TSA screening of them. That person would simply blow up the train safely from somewhere far away or sabotage the tracks or whatever, because it's no secret when and where the train is gonna be. It's on a timetable and it can't leave a fixed track. Why try to get your bomb on board it at all?

Even in countries where people have tried crazy ****, like releasing Sarin gas or legitimately trying to blow up subway systems, I don't think the reaction has been to make everybody go through airline security. The reason is because it would be even more of a dumb meaningless show to do so than it is for planes.

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You are smoking crack.

1. There is no way in hell the TSA would not muscle their way into "security" for something like this. The .gov would smell blood in the water and attack like a pack of tiger sharks on an injured whale.

2. You act as if there would be zero impacts should some crazy jihadi butthole decide to blow up a bomb in a train. Hint - if something were to happen, it's not going to happen while the train is zipping along through no man's land between Huntsville and Centerville - it's going to happen while the train is at or near one of the terminals. Because it won't be about just killing people, terrorism (especially here) isn't about sheer numbers. It's as much, if not more, about the downstream effects caused by it. A train exploding near the 290/610 interchange or the I-10/610 Interchange or in downtown Arlington or Dallas or wherever up in yankee land it will terminate will not just stop train traffic - it's going to charlie foxtrot the entire city and have massive reaching effects, which impact everything up to and including economics. Which would be the main goal for some wacked out jackwagon anyway.

3. Most other countries have had some pretty significant reactions to terrorism or attempted terrorism, including dong smarter things than our snowflake PC society will ever do (profiling, because it's just ****ing smart) to having fully armed military personnel on active patrols throughout areas like train stations and airports to help deter bad guys from being bad guys.

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1. There is no way in hell the TSA would not muscle their way into "security" for something like this. The .gov would smell blood in the water and attack like a pack of tiger sharks on an injured whale.

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I was pretty amazed they didn't get into train stations after 911. You can ride from Manhattan to Union Station in DC, with a stop at the Newark airport, without being having your anatomy explored.

In a related note, the only time in my life that I'm actually nervous about being in a huge crowd that is susceptible to a terrorist attack is waiting to get through security lines packed in like sardines for 30 minutes or more at sporting venues. Particularly Minute Maid Park where everybody is basically just standing on the street.

JJxvi said:

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In a related note, the only time in my life that I'm actually nervous about being in a huge crowd that is susceptible to a terrorist attack is waiting to get through security lines packed in like sardines for 30 minutes or more at sporting venues. Particularly Minute Maid Park where everybody is basically just standing on the street.

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I've always hated the cattle lines at any airport to go through TSA security. Not only do you have to get packed in with the unwashed masses like sardines waiting in line, but you get the lovely exposure to radiation through the x-ray or CT scan machines that are operated by people I wouldn't trust with a bottle of aspirin, you also get to stand next to the trash can full of liquids that could be explosives and therefore cannot be taken into the "secure area". Instead, they toss all of them into a plastic trash can that I can only assume is really bomb proof right next to the scanners.

On a Monday morning at Hobby, you could eff up a whole lot of people and shut the entire air system in the US down.

Brilliant.

blindey said:

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JJxvi said:

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Trains will never require TSA except through sheer paranoia.

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uh, hi. Have you ever been on the Eurostar? Every person and every item you bring is metal detected/x-rayed. Everything.

If you think the TSA would just roll over and let more agency expansion and regulatory creep go away, I've got a bridge to sell you.

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Then sell me a bridge. TSA performs no security screening for Amtrak Acela, which has been an operating high-speed train for more than 15 years now. You just walk-up and board.

I've road the Eurostar, TGV, ICE, NSB, Trenitalia, and Italo. Eurostar is the only one that performs any security screening. They do so because of the increased safety risks traveling through a long undersea tunnel and because the train crosses the Schengen Area. Smugglers have tried to exploit the Chunnel since it first opened.