EcoZapp.Makes.Crisp.Air said:

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So moral of the story, in 20 years from now Texas will be another 20 years less advantaged when it comes to Transportation or fast moving trains.

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Passenger rail is a 19th century solution. Self-driving cars and faster, more economical flight options would kill this albatross before it celebrates its first birthday.

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Texas is still trying to figure out and keep up with road construction over the past couple decades. Anyone driven down any Hwy's or Interstates lately in Texas? and here we are arguing about a train, and many proud to not have one/ will always drag down an idea like this.

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One of the biggest realities that those with a train fixation can't seem to grasp is that POPULATION DENSITY is essential for a train to have any benefit. The people living in Dallas and Houston are too spread out to get any benefit from passenger rail. The Tokyo-Osaka line is held up as a model but their population density is nearly 10x that of Houston or Dallas and it even requires subsidy from the Japanese government to stay in existence.

02skiag said:

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I think the majority of Texans think the idea is "neat" and they aren't directly affected by it. I really don't see enough demand for it, but maybe I'm missing something. I'd like to see some data on that.

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"Texas" Central says they have studies that prove the demand is there but they refuse to divulge how they came to that determination. Anyone wonder why?

It should never be legal for one company to steal or encumber another private person's land. And the state should not be supporting it.

You addressed the other parts of his post, so I'll address this:

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- If Elon Musk said let's build a Train instead of some company from Japan- would that make all the difference in a Train? Cuz now we're just hating on some company from Japan just cuz they're from Japan it sounds..

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How in the world are you coming to that conclusion?

woodiewood1 said:

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It should never be legal for one company to steal or encumber another private person's land. And the state should not be supporting it.

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Can't be said enough. Private companies should NEVER be allowed to use Eminent Domain.

Ever.

Stupe said:

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woodiewood1 said:

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It should never be legal for one company to steal or encumber another private person's land. And the state should not be supporting it.

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Can't be said enough. Private companies should NEVER be allowed to use Eminent Domain.

Ever.

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I agree, and gov't eminent domain should be used sparingly and as a last resort. I know of one instance where College Station used eminent domain to take away a family owned sandwich shop at Northgate for "parking," only to immediately change their mind and sell it to a franchise sandwich shop. Later, they forced the former landowner of the Northgate parking garage to sell to them, threatening eminent domain. The deal was agreed to and the city changed city managers. The new manager refused to honor the deal, and forced the owner to settle for $20K less. Economic impact should never be allowed as an eminent domain argument.

A friend of mine use to work for TXDOT. When they want R.O.W. they value the land as if it was vacant and unusable for anything but the roadway. It does not matter what the owner values it at, or uses it for. Eminent Domain is used to force the seller to accept an amount less than they would normally demand by using the threat of a much lower valuation, if eminent domain is declared.

EcoZapp.Makes.Crisp.Air said:

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- But with the property rights argument we may never have a train to connect major Texas cities in our lifetime. - Is that the answer? because thats not a good answer either. Lets just stick to gas, more road construction and the millions of additional ppl migrating to Texas on the roadways over the next two decades.

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If Union Pacific, KC Southern, BNSF, or one of the other actual railroad companies were to decide to do this, then they could indeed use imminent domain.

But these railroad companies don't want to get into this b/c they know that they couldn't make a good return and they would not get government support. To attract ridership, the price would have to be too low; they would then have to raise price to an appropriate level at which point they wouldn't have enough passengers to make a profit.

This is likely why they abandoned passenger service long ago - b/c only tax dollar subsidized operations like Amtrak can make it, and then not very well.

Exactly. They aren't financially viable and the low number of people that would use them in a state that is as spread out as Texas would make it a money pit and the track would either:

• Go into complete disrepair when the company goes bankrupt
• Fall on the shoulders of taxpayers to maintain the "service"

Neither of those are good outcomes for something that would get minimal use.

EcoZapp.Makes.Crisp.Air said:

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How old is everyone here? Ya'll guys seem to not care much about 15-20 years from now. Protect low value land and always assume a Train company is going to go broke? May the construction building roads thru the Texas Triangle continue forever! There's a million more cars headed this direction folks

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Old and NOT a socialist like you. Our land belongs to us and a private company can not take it.

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Ya'll guys seem to not care much about 15-20 years from now.

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That's exactly what we are talking about....what that thing would would be in 10/15/20 years...a drain on taxpayers or an abandoned railway. You just aren't understanding what we are saying.

We are also old enough to remember the Amtrack Station that used to be at George Bush and Wellborn. Guess why it "used to be there" 20 years ago and isn't there now?

What "volumes" of people are going to take on the cost of taking a train from Houston to Dallas...or vice versa.. and then spend more money on a daily car rental when they can make a 4 hour drive or take a flight for less?

Where are the volumes of people calling for this in order to justify it?

Businesses aren't going to use it to send someone up for a day for a meeting when they can do HD video conferences at almost no cost.

It's interesting that you keep saying that us olds don't understand the future when this thing would have been more viable 40 years ago when we didn't have the technology that we have today.

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Situation & Variables have changed too drastically since 20 years ago to compare. in 20 years from now- Texas is at a bigger disadvantage from not having a modern rail system.
Rail travel would work here only in an urban area like Houston/Dallas where this is a high concentration of riders in a small geographic region.

Texas is just too big to be economically feasible as mentioned above multiple times.

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If you look at ridership and revenue for DART light rail and TexRail, there apparently isn't a high enough concentration of people in Dallas/Fort Worth to support subsidized (by toll roads) passenger rail.

EcoZapp please join us in the 21st century. Passenger rail ceased being viable over 100 years ago.
Also, your name and this predatory opinion (stealing land for a foreign company is not terribly neighborly) probably isn't helping you earn lots of business in Grimes county nor with Brazos county residents with enough common sense to see this scam for what it is.

Ecozapp is making it even worse for himself with this thread than the usual AC crap argument

Let the Brazos Transit District take over the high-speed rail project. Then it can be state and Federally funded, operate at a 95% tax $$ subsidy, and always have room for more passengers.

Loneliest person(s) driving around B-CS has to be a BTD bus driver....

Where to begin? Most have tackled the private property issue, the lack of population density and the high percentage of car ownership, the high cost, and the fact that no one seems to be asking for it.
It was mentioned that roads (wit the traffic and construction is all we have to move a large number of people between houston and dallas. Completely leaving out the airlines, but I digress. Others have certainly mentioned that.

What about the statement that in 10-15 years this will make it easier for people in Dallas to travel to A&M games because of the traffic on highways. Wait.....what?

Most people do not travel from the convention center (the site of the proposed station) area of Dallas. However, many do drive through it on the way because they are coming from Frisco, Plano, Richardson, HP, etc.
So they are going to travel to downtown, pay to park, pay between $300-400 for a round trip ticket each (let's go with a family of 4 here), get on an hour train ride (with arriving early, security, etc an extra 45 minutes at least), arrive at Roans Prairie (30 minutes minimum from Kyle Field on a non game day) where they will get off the train. Now they either Uber, take a cab, shuttle or have a friend pick them up. Once in College Station (unless they have family or friend chauffeuring them) they will be at one location without any transportation.
If they want to go to Koppe, Maroon U, etc it's more of a hassle. If spending the night more transportation issues getting to hotel most likely. Certainly can be overcome, but it's a thing.
With going out of your way even just a bit, parking, security, the ride, travel to BCS....let's call it 2:45 and approx $1200-1500 plus parking, shuttle, etc. Add in the hassle of downtown (nothing insane but with all of these extra people and cars I'm assuming it will be worse in 10-15 years as well).

OR

Keep driving on 35 (brutal) or 45. From downtown it's 2:45 ( I do this drive 6-7 times a month unfortunately). I am paying $50 in gas, have flexibility when in BCS, may pay $20 to park, with A LOT fewer moving parts for something to go wrong.

Yeah....this is definitely the option for the everyday person.

Also - who actually cares about Musk and whether it's an American company? No one on this thread apparently.

CinchAG97 said:

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Honest question: Why doesn't the train route follow the I-45 corridor?

That seems to make too much sense, I guess, but there's room and most of I-45 goes through rural land that has already been divided by a transportation corridor.

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IIRC, TXDOT said hell no to a private railway on their roadways.

rsa said:

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BrazosWifi said:

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CinchAG97 said:

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Honest question: Why doesn't the train route follow the I-45 corridor?

That seems to make too much sense, I guess, but there's room and most of I-45 goes through rural land that has already been divided by a transportation corridor.

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IIRC, TXDOT said hell no to a private railway on their roadways.

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From what I recall from the info sessions they held, there are too many over/underpasses to contend with, and TXDOT wants to keep their RoW clear for potential future expansion.

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Its a real estate scam. Initial investors own the vacant Northwest Mall, a large portion of the abandoned Bluebonnet Golf Club and some worthless real estate in the ghetto south of downtown Dallas. The proposed route connects those dots.

Competition via train?

They have put the cost out there. It makes zero sense economically. Taxpayers subsidize these all over the world but this one will be different.

Unless I was traveling to downtown of either city, which is very rare for me, I'm driving or on a plane. If you aren't connecting to another flight, flying doesn't make sense to me usually either.
Plane or train doesn't make sense to me from a convenience standpoint at all. But I like the independence of driving.

What if the competition occurs and th entrain loses? Likely outcome in my opinion. We all know what happens.

Why did Amtrak cut back so severely? I realize it's not "high speed" but of the price was say $100, tops, instead of $400 each I could see more going that route. Why does
It not come through BCS anymore? It's been around 50 years and I don't know anyone who uses it.

EcoZapp.Makes.Crisp.Air said:

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The Part about

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Initial investors own the vacant Northwest Mall, a large portion of the abandoned Bluebonnet Golf Club and some worthless real estate in the ghetto south of downtown Dallas. The proposed route connects those dots.

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seems like a good thing, or better thing.. What does the majority of land between the two cities consist of?

Turning a bunch of low value properties into high value real estate is part of the gamble I bet!

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The issue is "Texas" Central wants to use TAXPAYER FUNDED AND GUARANTEED loans to get an inflated price for their garbage real estate and in the process, destroy the property values in every county they pass through.
Then, once the loans are funded BY THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER, the investors get paid off before any dirt is disturbed. When the train goes belly-up due to high prices and poor ridership, the few actual investors lose nothing, Japan keeps the train real estate due to their equity loans and the American Taxpayer is left holding the bag (at least a $20 billion bag).

How is this a good idea again?