Induced demand.

And the fact that I sat on the *widest freeway in the world* - I10 for approximately a decade.

Manhattan said:

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Induced demand.

And the fact that I sat on the *widest freeway in the world* - I10 for approximately a decade.

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Since a wide freeway has heavy traffic, making any freeway wider can't reduce congestion.
About what I expected

But again, no one has explained the relevancy of the I-45 expansion to the bullet train other than "look this is expensive too"

It's comparable because people are pissed there is a train going through or near their land, vs 100s of homes and businesses being demoed for 45…. The OP is about the eminent domain case.

Do you know how many homes and businesses would be demo'd for the train?
Do you know how many people would benefit from the train vs the I-45 expansion?

Not advocating for the I-45 expansion, but you're conveniently repeating 1 data point that isn't even the most important/relevant to the thread.

Was billions for airports in the last infrastructure bill

Couldn't you say that highway maintenance snd expansion is a plus as it can be upgraded to adjust to changing times?

Trains don't do that.

Ridership in cities has never reached pre pandemic levels. They won't ever again. Those times are over and this nostalgic reach for the past - public transport needs to end.

Is Roans Prairie really in the Brazos Valley?

techno-ag said:

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Manhattan said:

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When you are still tearing down homes and businesses after 100 years and still have massive traffic, highway widenings aren't very practical either.

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Self driving cars will alleviate a lot of that.

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Spoiler alert. The powers that be are going to make owning a car and driving it expensive enough to reduce traffic. You will de facto be forced to take Uber via self driving cars.

JamesE4 said:

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Deputy Travis Junior said:

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AggieCo2023 said:

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There's literally perfect functioning trains in several other states lol. Why can't Texas do something Japan and Europe can?

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Look at the population densities. Japan and large swaths of Europe are practically continuous giant cities and their commercial districts are much tighter. Compare that to your Dallas to Houston route. There's nothing in between and once you arrive 2/3 of the train passengers will be looking at a 30+ minute uber to travel to The Woodlands or Katy (the Energy Corridor) or Fort Worth or whatever.

So let's run the math. Google Maps says it's 3h30m from Dallas to Houston. That's the time to beat.
1) 20-30 minutes to the train station
2) need to arrive 60 minutes early to do all the same TSA + boarding stuff that they force you to do at the airport.
3) 1 hour ride (unreasonably optimistic; there will be numerous stops)
4) 30 minutes to disembark, wait on your ride, and drive wherever (probably optimistic)

If it's a 60 minute train ride (again, ridiculously optimistic), you're looking at 3+ hours. If we lengthen the travel time to 1h45m and increase the cab time a little you're looking at 4h. On the financial side, you're looking at 4 cab rides + a train ticket, which is probably $200+. Why would anybody sign up for this? It saves you no time, costs far more, and subjects you to all the travel headaches of airlines.

The business offering offers nothing superior to the current solution while costing a lot more. Oh, and as self driving tech improves, the speed limits between cities will likely increase, decreasing the drive time and making your expensive solution even worse comparatively. (While self driving tech is not ready for city driving, it's ready or darn close to ready for travel between them where traffic and driver behavior is a lot more predictable. In 10 years when they're finishing up your high speed rail system it'll be deployed.)

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Totally wrong on TSA/arrive 60 min early. In Europe I can arrive 10 min before departure and make it easily.

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Okay so chop 45 minutes off of my estimate and then add an hour because it's not going to be a zero stop train.

By the time they complete this thing in a decade, I bet you'll be able to drive from Dallas to Houston in < 3 hours. Taking the train will be far slower than driving.

Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Do you know how many homes and businesses would be demo'd for the train?
Do you know how many people would benefit from the train vs the I-45 expansion?

Not advocating for the I-45 expansion, but you're conveniently repeating 1 data point that isn't even the most important/relevant to the thread.

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The entire thread is about eminent domain.

How profitable are all the freeways that we have in place? Surely they must be making millions.

Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Do you know how many homes and businesses would be demo'd for the train?
Do you know how many people would benefit from the train vs the I-45 expansion?

Not advocating for the I-45 expansion, but you're conveniently repeating 1 data point that isn't even the most important/relevant to the thread.

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The entire thread is about eminent domain.

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The entire thread is about the bullet train, you're choosing to only focus on I-45's eminent domain.

frenchtoast said:

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How profitable are all the freeways that we have in place? Surely they must be making millions.

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literally

https://www.nber.org/digest/apr19/new-estimates-benefits-us-highway-construction

The annual construction and maintenance costs of 10 lane-miles of highway vary from about $1.9 million in rural-flat areas to $6.5 million in rural-mountainous areas.

For about three-quarters of all highway segments, adding 10 additional lane-miles generates benefits valued at between $10 million and $20 million.

Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Do you know how many homes and businesses would be demo'd for the train?
Do you know how many people would benefit from the train vs the I-45 expansion?

Not advocating for the I-45 expansion, but you're conveniently repeating 1 data point that isn't even the most important/relevant to the thread.

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The entire thread is about eminent domain.

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The entire thread is about the bullet train, you're choosing to only focus on I-45's eminent domain.

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Read the Texas Supreme Court decision… Texas Central is all but dead, but the ruling makes this a possibility in the future.

My point about I45 is that highway projects are significantly more damaging than this rail project.

Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Do you know how many homes and businesses would be demo'd for the train?
Do you know how many people would benefit from the train vs the I-45 expansion?

Not advocating for the I-45 expansion, but you're conveniently repeating 1 data point that isn't even the most important/relevant to the thread.

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The entire thread is about eminent domain.

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The entire thread is about the bullet train, you're choosing to only focus on I-45's eminent domain.

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Read the Texas Supreme Court decision… Texas Central is all but dead, but the ruling makes this a possibility in the future.

My point about I45 is that highway projects are significantly more damaging than this rail project.

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I45 caters more to the individual's needs than a train.

Someone made a point about it taking less than 3 hrs to get between Houston to Dallas hit the nail on the head.

It's less than 4 hrs now to get between. Used to be close to 6 in the 90s.

Texas isn't Europe. It's not Singapore. It's not Hong Kong. These idealistic dreams people have because they went to London once for a week (lol who hasnt?) and think they are "enlightened" need to get some perspective.

Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Do you know how many homes and businesses would be demo'd for the train?
Do you know how many people would benefit from the train vs the I-45 expansion?

Not advocating for the I-45 expansion, but you're conveniently repeating 1 data point that isn't even the most important/relevant to the thread.

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The entire thread is about eminent domain.

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The entire thread is about the bullet train, you're choosing to only focus on I-45's eminent domain.

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Read the Texas Supreme Court decision… Texas Central is all but dead, but the ruling makes this a possibility in the future.

My point about I45 is that highway projects are significantly more damaging than this rail project.

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Jesus Christ, you've actually managed to cause me to pity you through your inability to reason through ideas… you can repeat the same thing again in response to this if you'd like, but I'm tired of explaining the same thing to you over and over again so it will fall on deaf ears, or blind eyes since this is written.

I45 may be more damaging (an assumption you've taken as fact given that it is unknown how many people will be adversely affect by the train), but it most definitely services and benefits more people than the train would. You can write this off as an assumption as well and that's fine, but any empirically intuitive person would agree with my claim.

Isn't your lot all about utilitarianism when a binary is present?

This is why one shouldn't be used as a reason to justify the other, or at least not with what is currently known. They don't serve anywhere near the same purpose. I45 in Houston metro doesn't have an adequate level of service. This is evident by its flow rate. The train isn't being proposed due to I45 between houston and dfw as a result of level of service issues, but rather limiting factors of current automobile transportation.

I'm still not advocating for I45 expansion for the record.

Q: how does potentially removing a hundred cars an hour from rural stretches of I-45 move the traffic needle at all?

It clearly doesn't alleviate local traffic (as "Uber" still equals cars on city roads).
Or if it's supposed to service those without cars - they weren't part of the I-45 traffic equation to begin with.
And even if you were able to materially reduce congestion - it'll just entice more rapid suburban expansion that'll clog the roads once again.

"Manhattan" may or be ideally suited to understanding of Texas transportation factors.

AlaskanAg99 said:

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Who's footing the bill?

The real issue is people who's land will be divided by the rail and the likelihood of inadequet crossings for them to access their property and the likelihood of reduced productivity. You can have "normal" RR crossings for HSR. Further eminent domain requires the taker to pay fair market value, but that will be a highly contested fight per parcel.

Lastly, the terminus of each end will be an issue. The rail line won't be going into downtown Houston or Dallas which will excaberare the last mile issue. And they will probably have to be built along existing RR ROWs, so you can look at a map to figure out where the lines may be and finally, they can't run normal freight on HSR lines.

Just have to look at the history of CAs massive HSR failures to see what future pitfalls may come.

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Weren't they also talking about taking something like a half mile or wide mile strip and having limited crossings from one side to the other?

The vastness of the land grab is just plain crazy.

I would have no objections to the railroads if they would do so without stealing land by eminent domain.

Stealing? Yep. If it goes to eminent domain, it means that the buyer and the seller could not arrive to a mutually agreeable price and the buyer is forcing the seller to sell for an amount less than what he is satisfied with.

eric76 said:

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AlaskanAg99 said:

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Who's footing the bill?

The real issue is people who's land will be divided by the rail and the likelihood of inadequet crossings for them to access their property and the likelihood of reduced productivity. You can have "normal" RR crossings for HSR. Further eminent domain requires the taker to pay fair market value, but that will be a highly contested fight per parcel.

Lastly, the terminus of each end will be an issue. The rail line won't be going into downtown Houston or Dallas which will excaberare the last mile issue. And they will probably have to be built along existing RR ROWs, so you can look at a map to figure out where the lines may be and finally, they can't run normal freight on HSR lines.

Just have to look at the history of CAs massive HSR failures to see what future pitfalls may come.

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Weren't they also talking about taking something like a half mile or wide mile strip and having limited crossings from one side to the other?

The vastness of the land grab is just plain crazy.

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No one has ever gotten a clear answer and it certainly varies along the route, but yes. I processed this info as the proof/counter point that the final product would be elevated viaduct like some claimed. A swath that wide would only be needed for large cut/fill operations that would limit the grade changes. A train doing in excess of 150mph would have to have very gentle vertical curves

Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Do you know how many homes and businesses would be demo'd for the train?
Do you know how many people would benefit from the train vs the I-45 expansion?

Not advocating for the I-45 expansion, but you're conveniently repeating 1 data point that isn't even the most important/relevant to the thread.

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The entire thread is about eminent domain.

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The entire thread is about the bullet train, you're choosing to only focus on I-45's eminent domain.

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Read the Texas Supreme Court decision… Texas Central is all but dead, but the ruling makes this a possibility in the future.

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The Texas Supreme Court decision was based upon their interpretation of what was written in the Texas Transportation Code. After the legislature gets done with drag shows, that is something that can always get modified if they really wanted to close the door on eminent domain for high speed rail.

Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Manhattan said:

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Aggie_Boomin 21 said:

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Do you know how many homes and businesses would be demo'd for the train?
Do you know how many people would benefit from the train vs the I-45 expansion?

Not advocating for the I-45 expansion, but you're conveniently repeating 1 data point that isn't even the most important/relevant to the thread.

---

The entire thread is about eminent domain.

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The entire thread is about the bullet train, you're choosing to only focus on I-45's eminent domain.

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Read the Texas Supreme Court decision… Texas Central is all but dead, but the ruling makes this a possibility in the future.

My point about I45 is that highway projects are significantly more damaging than this rail project.

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Jesus Christ, you've actually managed to cause me to pity you through your inability to reason through ideas… you can repeat the same thing again in response to this if you'd like, but I'm tired of explaining the same thing to you over and over again so it will fall on deaf ears, or blind eyes since this is written.

I45 may be more damaging (an assumption you've taken as fact given that it is unknown how many people will be adversely affect by the train), but it most definitely services and benefits more people than the train would. You can write this off as an assumption as well and that's fine, but any empirically intuitive person would agree with my claim.

Isn't your lot all about utilitarianism when a binary is present?

This is why one shouldn't be used as a reason to justify the other, or at least not with what is currently known. They don't serve anywhere near the same purpose. I45 in Houston metro doesn't have an adequate level of service. This is evident by its flow rate. The train isn't being proposed due to I45 between houston and dfw as a result of level of service issues, but rather limiting factors of current automobile transportation.

I'm still not advocating for I45 expansion for the record.

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Man, chill out. Can't you make a response without attacking the poster with the lowest hanging fruit? Doesn't make sense to attack someone's ability to reason with low e-intelligence. The train is a boondoggle in my opinion but I dont believe the people who had land where the 249 extension is cared whether it was a railway or road. They got the s!$t end of the stick. Eminent domain sucks regardless whether it road expansion or a new railway

Manhattan said:

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Nobody would be losing any land.

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Nonsense. Even if the rail cut through someone's property without physically touching the underlying land, there are at an absolute minimum air rights that would be acquired and would be compensable.

Zarathustra said:

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Aside from all the logical arguments already. Why the h*** do so many people need to go back-and-forth from Dallas and Houston in the age of telecommuting?

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Excellent point. In addition, and again, it's obsolete tech.

The Democrat obsession with trains stems from their worship of Europe, their lack of belief in personal property rights, and their refusal to care about the cost because they view it as a tax covered public service.

Even though hardly anyone would use it.

HTownAg98 said:

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Manhattan said:

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Nobody would be losing any land.

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Nonsense. Even if the rail cut through someone's property without physically touching the underlying land, there are at an absolute minimum air rights that would be acquired and would be compensable.

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FYI - He's a pathological liar.

We all know the real reason behind this push. Some big donors stands to make billions off this boondoggle.

I can't believe we are having this discussion.

Highways - take both commercial and personal traffic. You can got off anywhere there is an exit. You can get on anywhere there is an entrance. It is freedom at it's best. Commercial and personal share the road, multiple lanes.

Rail traffic - commercial and personal share one lane, you cannot get off or on whenever you want. If there is an interruption - say a derailment or a cow sitting on the railway line, or the rail is fractured...guess what happens? Someone in a truck coming down a road has to get there to fix the problem. Are we really too unintelligent to not see what's right and what's wrong here?

Rail works in America for commercial hauls, because the distance between the Powder River Basin and the hauling points along the Mississippi River or the Gulf Coast is vast. It does not work for passenger hauls, economically, end of story. Btw - 32 year career in rail.

AggieCo2023 said:

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https://original.newsbreak.com/@jalyn-smoot-1588339/2898655750882-texas-supreme-court-ruling-paves-way-for-30-billion-dollar-dallas-to-houston-bullet-train

Apologies if there already was a thread, but exciting news from the Texas Supreme Court who gave life to this project connecting Dallas and Houston. It also will include a stop in Brazos County which will be helpful for students from each of those cities which is probably 40% of the student body. Hopefully this is completed soon and gives Texans other (quicker) alternatives between the two cities. Should help further our economy as more and more companies are moving their HQ's and production here.

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This whole thing is a STUPID project