Missed Opportunity. BCS Stop on High-Speed Texas Central Railroad

7,290 Views | 73 Replies | Last: 3 yr ago by rsa
bcstx06
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People here always complain that we don't have high paying jobs here. The leaders in this county should have fought to have a stop here, not in the middle of nowhere 30+ miles to the east. Many businesses and corporations that would have never looked at this area would have started looking because of the convenience of getting to Dallas and Houston in record time and access to all of their international airports. People could also choose to live here and work in Houston or a Dallas. So many possibilities when you have close access to transportation like that. Just a thought...


https://www.kbtx.com/2020/09/21/this-is-the-moment-we-have-been-working-towards-dallas-houston-high-speed-rail-project-federally-approved/
cavscout96
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AG
No thanks.

We've got more than our fair share of Houston suburb already.
rsa
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Given the "brain trust" that runs our municipalities & county, I shudder to think of what kind of half-witted, ill planned affront to public norms of a train stop they'd dream up and inflict upon us. Two things you could count on if they did get to build it: special fees would be levied on our properties, and maroon & beige would be the color scheme.
EBrazosAg
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The stop will be about 15 miles E. That's close enough. Look at the ROW for the high speed and tell me where you want it in your neighborhood or where in town it could be done affordably.
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EcoZapp.AC&Air.Purifiers
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- Not sure why so many are "OK" with something like this missing the area by 15 miles..

Railroads / Other Methods besides HWY 6 seem like good ideas.

College Kids don't all have cars and might need to get to Campus to go to School or .. Maybe X % of 100,000 ppl traveling to Kyle Field might want to use the train.
EcoZapp.AC&Air.Purifiers
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EBrazosAg said:

The stop will be about 15 miles E. That's close enough. Look at the ROW for the high speed and tell me where you want it in your neighborhood or where in town it could be done affordably.
- Build the Platform in Santa's Wonderland ~1 mile from city, Call it Platform 12.
EBrazosAg
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EcoZapp.BCS.Air.Roofing said:

- Not sure why so many are "OK" with something like this missing the area by 15 miles..

Railroads / Other Methods besides HWY 6 seem like good ideas.

College Kids don't all have cars and might need to get to Campus to go to School or .. Maybe X % of 100,000 ppl traveling to Kyle Field might want to use the train.



Obviously you have not looked at the ROW width. Uber and Lyft will do just fine. If coming through town had good economics then the private builder would have done it .....
No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.
lost my dog
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cavscout96 said:

No thanks.

We've got more than our fair share of Houston suburb already.
Agreed. We have high paying jobs in town already. We don't need to become CyFair northwest.
BQ_90
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Basically Covid has shown telework it a better alternative than stealing land from people to build a train that will never make a dime and end up costing the tax payers millions.
EcoZapp.AC&Air.Purifiers
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EBrazosAg said:

EcoZapp.BCS.Air.Roofing said:

- Not sure why so many are "OK" with something like this missing the area by 15 miles..

Railroads / Other Methods besides HWY 6 seem like good ideas.

College Kids don't all have cars and might need to get to Campus to go to School or .. Maybe X % of 100,000 ppl traveling to Kyle Field might want to use the train.



Obviously you have not looked at the ROW width. Uber and Lyft will do just fine. If coming through town had good economics then the private builder would have done it .....



How wide does the ROW need to be ?

And can you scale it on a google map for the audience
jja79
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What's wrong with people buying or building homes, paying taxes and spending money locally?
isitjustme
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Call me a skeptic if you'd like, but there is no way this HSR makes money without significant tax dollar support. They never have in the US - ask Amtrak, ask DC Metro. Who cares if they run at a slower speed, the concept is the same. The ticket prices, if they were not subsidized, would drive away most all passengers and we'd be left with a big boondoggle of a train track built on stolen land and with borrowed money.

I know, less skeptical and more gloom & doom.
cavscout96
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BQ_90 said:

Basically Covid has shown telework it a better alternative than stealing land from people to build a train that will never make a dime and end up costing the tax payers millions.
so much this
cavscout96
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EcoZapp.BCS.Air.Roofing said:

EBrazosAg said:

EcoZapp.BCS.Air.Roofing said:

- Not sure why so many are "OK" with something like this missing the area by 15 miles..

Railroads / Other Methods besides HWY 6 seem like good ideas.

College Kids don't all have cars and might need to get to Campus to go to School or .. Maybe X % of 100,000 ppl traveling to Kyle Field might want to use the train.



Obviously you have not looked at the ROW width. Uber and Lyft will do just fine. If coming through town had good economics then the private builder would have done it .....



How wide does the ROW need to be ?

And can you scale it on a google map for the audience

the question isn't how big does it need to be. It's how much are the "demanding."


the bigger issue is granting imminent domain to a private company. complete garbage
Justified
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Double blue star for you
legalbird
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No thanks.

We already have too many intersections where east, west, north, and south is clogged up. People sitting in cars waiting for the light to turn green. Everyone has red light and engines are running (EMISSIONS AND POLLUTION)



Need smart lights that keep traffic moving versus sitting and sitting at red light. Across Texas this would free up congestions.

Have concrete dividers for single lane traffic on highways. The decision making process is hard for people. If you can only go straight, you can't go 20mph with your blinker on for some hope of a lane change.

When you ride a train, you need a car prior and after your train ride.

lost my dog
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jja79 said:

What's wrong with people buying or building homes, paying taxes and spending money locally?
Not wanting my town to become a bedroom community does not necessarily imply that that I must be against buying or building homes or spending money locally.

You're making some big assumptions to get from my statement to your conclusion
frito bandito
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agrab86 said:

Call me a skeptic if you'd like, but there is no way this HSR makes money without significant tax dollar support. They never have in the US - ask Amtrak, ask DC Metro. Who cares if they run at a slower speed, the concept is the same. The ticket prices, if they were not subsidized, would drive away most all passengers and we'd be left with a big boondoggle of a train track built on stolen land and with borrowed money.

I know, less skeptical and more gloom & doom.
And yet how many airlines built airports and air traffic control systems? The ultimate subsidy. Rail transit is the only transportation system that is penalized when comparing costs because it does not get the same subsidies that airlines and highways receive.
EcoZapp.AC&Air.Purifiers
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- Im not sure why so many worry about a Rail Road making money or not making money.. it's not like it's a profit share anyone here is going to benefit from/ have ownership in..

.. Unless you count the total number of extra people walking around town that a train may bring in..


Someone did a case study once on how to waste $100m not long ago, Maybe we could add an actual Top Golf connected to the train station.. 2 Major Birds with one Budget


- Since we all love Tradition & History:
  • The Name " College Station " is literally derived from something like " College + Train Station" which once connect A&M to the Outside World for people. Building a Train actually seems like a conservative thing to do


I bet there are enough Engineers walking around right now on campus to Engineer getting a Train Closer to Campus.. Aggies are capable of building things still imo

isitjustme
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EcoZapp.BCS.Air.Roofing said:

- Im not sure why so many worry about a Rail Road making money or not making money.. it's not like it's a profit share anyone here is going to benefit from/ have ownership in..


We're concerned about it making money because we all know that it won't. And when it begins to fail, they will go to our elected leaders, plead for a bail-out, and likely get it - all so the bondholders won't lose any money. Then we all become partners (as taxpayers) in a railroad that will never make money and never have any profits to share. Again, see AMTRAK.
EcoZapp.AC&Air.Purifiers
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agrab86 said:

EcoZapp.BCS.Air.Roofing said:

- Im not sure why so many worry about a Rail Road making money or not making money.. it's not like it's a profit share anyone here is going to benefit from/ have ownership in..


We're concerned about it making money because we all know that it won't. And when it begins to fail, they will go to our elected leaders, plead for a bail-out, and likely get it - all so the bondholders won't lose any money. Then we all become partners (as taxpayers) in a railroad that will never make money and never have any profits to share. Again, see AMTRAK.
- I think we have bigger issues. But using AMTRAK as a case study forever means America can/ will never figure out a Train..

Tech has changed, Train Locomotives have changed , ( I bet new Trains don't break down near as often as trains build decades ago ) , Car Ownership / Habits have changed, The A&M Student body is likely to change etc..



In 50 or 100 years College Station will still not have a train if people always point to AMTRAK for Failures in Decision making/ planning. Most ppl have never ridden AMTRAK and don't even know the lingo of the issues.
Brian Alg
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When I think of big new train projects. I don't think of Amtrak, I think of California. Maybe this doesn't have the burden of being a California government project and so it has a better chance of working out. But I don't want to see our tax dollars getting thrown at this project in light of what we see there. If the thing gets made and it turns out rail is the wave of the future; maybe we could build a 15 mile leg out to this train. But now isn't the time to dump money (let alone tax money) into that unlikely prospect.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-08/newsom-bullet-train-faces-financial-crunch%3F_amp%3Dtrue
Brian Alg

Brazos Coalition for Responsible Government
GrimesCoAg95
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I don't speak for all of Grimes County, but from my perspective, you can have it.
oldag00
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EcoZapp.BCS.Air.Roofing said:


Most ppl have never ridden AMTRAK...

...which is exactly the problem.
legalbird
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California is broke and that is why some people are fleeing to Texas or other states.
frito bandito
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Back in the day, people did use the train to flock to College Station on game day. There was a small yard next to Kyle Field, and I have seen aerial photographs of at least six trains parked there for a football game.

Times change, but at some point in the future, when fossil fuels are expensive, again, our kids and grandkids will ask why don't we have mass transit. Anything we can do now to prepare for that day is an investment in the future.
legalbird
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I declare: The commoners must take ye ol' train.

I, being elite, shall drive my large vehicle with fine grained leather seats.

Sorry, not on board that train!
EcoZapp.AC&Air.Purifiers
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oldag00 said:

EcoZapp.BCS.Air.Roofing said:


Most ppl have never ridden AMTRAK...

...which is exactly the problem.
- There's ALOT of Issues with Amtrak.. but also the timing of the Country at the time Vs. the Automobile.

But any student in an Algebra class can Identify Different Variables = Different Equations.

Amtrak runs a different track, with different engines, for different reasons.


Texas Having a High Speed Train is Good for Texas on many different levels.
Texas is Literally Full of Train Tracks carrying coal with Traffic on Highways matched with Zero Effort to Move ppl from Cars to Trains..

( Reasoning usually points to Ppl from California or Amtrak for Texas' Inability to build a Train.. )

agnerd
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EcoZapp.BCS.Air.Roofing said:

I bet there are enough Engineers walking around right now on campus to Engineer getting a Train Closer to Campus.. Aggies are capable of building things still imo
Engineering isn't just about making it happen. Given enough time, money, and resources, we can do anything you want. Engineering is about the efficient use of money and resources. This train is the farthest thing from an efficient use of resources I've seen in Texas. Cost-benefit ratio is approaching lottery levels of stupidity. It's more of a how-to-profit-off-a-bankruptcy project than anything having to do with engineering.
lost my dog
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The majority of rail miles travelled by Amtrak trains are on tracks owned by freight railroads. There is no technological or organizational reason that there could not be passenger service on the Union Pacific tracks which run through town.

The demand simply does not exist, and there is no one willing to subsidize mass transit from BCS to anywhere (pretty much all mass transit requires subsidies.)

But as some have said, this may change
agnerd
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Every single person in the state of Texas will have to spend $1,000 on this train for it to break even.

For just the INTEREST on the money it take to build the train, you can build a new runway and terminal at both DFW, and IAH, purchase 20 737s that do nothing but fly back and forth between the two runways, replace the planes every 20 years, and never charge a dollar for a fare. That's for JUST THE INTEREST on the money. Everybody should be angry about how bad the math is on this project and the impending taxpayer bailout.
BQ_90
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from another board, think about this math for a minute.

Quote:

CanyonAg77
In reply to Drillbit4 12:16p

AG

Quote:

Drillbit4 said:
Someone did the math and for $20B you could build a new terminal in Houston and Dallas, buy several new planes, and have everyone fly for free for like 15 years. This is the dumbest project ever.
Round trip fares are anywhere from $90 to $500 between Dallas and Houston. Let's make it $200 for simplicity.

Stick that $20B in an investment somewhere, where it makes a lousy 5% return.

That gives you $1,000,000,000 a year to spend on airline tickets.

Or, five million tickets a year, around 13,700 tickets a day.

It appears to me that Southwest flies 8 flights a day to Houston from Dallas, 9 going the other way. So 8.5 round trips a day.

Their biggest 737s hold 175 passengers. 8.5 round trips a day, they currently move 1,488 people.

Bottom line: 5% interest on the $20B for high speed rail could buy 9x as many SW round trips a day, as SW currently flies.
Also I like now how cost doesn't matter, as if the entire time when this was being sold as no cost to the tax payers was just one big fat lie.
doubledog
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bcstx06 said:

People here always complain that we don't have high paying jobs here. The leaders in this county should have fought to have a stop here, not in the middle of nowhere 30+ miles to the east. Many businesses and corporations that would have never looked at this area would have started looking because of the convenience of getting to Dallas and Houston in record time and access to all of their international airports. People could also choose to live here and work in Houston or a Dallas. So many possibilities when you have close access to transportation like that. Just a thought...


https://www.kbtx.com/2020/09/21/this-is-the-moment-we-have-been-working-towards-dallas-houston-high-speed-rail-project-federally-approved/
The high speed rail is electric and will follow closely the power grid line (which they can also use as right of way). The closest grid (north south) to BCS is at the carlos/shiro area.
frito bandito
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agnerd said:

Every single person in the state of Texas will have to spend $1,000 on this train for it to break even.

For just the INTEREST on the money it take to build the train, you can build a new runway and terminal at both DFW, and IAH, purchase 20 737s that do nothing but fly back and forth between the two runways, replace the planes every 20 years, and never charge a dollar for a fare. That's for JUST THE INTEREST on the money. Everybody should be angry about how bad the math is on this project and the impending taxpayer bailout.
You are not comparing apples to apples. High speed rail is a whole new concept, and it is being built literally from the ground up. To make a real cost comparison, purchase the land, build the runways, terminal, hangars, parking and air traffic control systems at your airport. Then train and staff the hundreds of folks that it is going take to make that happen. Pay taxes on the real property, too. Compare those numbers. Then increase the price of jet fuel by a magnitude of three or four, and lets see how the numbers look..
techno-ag
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doubledog said:

bcstx06 said:

People here always complain that we don't have high paying jobs here. The leaders in this county should have fought to have a stop here, not in the middle of nowhere 30+ miles to the east. Many businesses and corporations that would have never looked at this area would have started looking because of the convenience of getting to Dallas and Houston in record time and access to all of their international airports. People could also choose to live here and work in Houston or a Dallas. So many possibilities when you have close access to transportation like that. Just a thought...


https://www.kbtx.com/2020/09/21/this-is-the-moment-we-have-been-working-towards-dallas-houston-high-speed-rail-project-federally-approved/
The high speed rail is electric and will follow closely the power grid line (which they can also use as right of way). The closest grid (north south) to BCS is at the carlos/shiro area.
Residents of King Oaks will be happy. The station will be relatively convenient...if it happens.

I still say transportation in Houston & Dallas is a sticking point, even with Uber. Would like to see a "ferry car" I can park my vehicle on and drive away at my destination. Prolly won't happen but that would make things a teeny more palatable imo.
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