Why no "San Antonio/Austin light rail or bullet train yet? (Houston: school, college)

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by thesonofgray

No closing down or stuffing required. We just need smart planning policies that encourage medium-density development where appropriate and discourage sprawl.

Recent story related to this thread: Lone Star Rail takes another step - Austin Business Journal

One way to do it would be to lower property tax rates (other city costs like electricity and water) for density or multi use properties

Those condo towers generate a lot more property tax per surface sq ft than a bunch of houses.

Create more magnet schools in the city so that parents would be more willing to live in the city because there are decent schools.

Approve more condos so the price per sq ft starts to drop. Charge developers the actual infrastructure cost of new subdivisions.

Mandate that new condos/ apartments be mixed use with the ground floor being retail

Mandate that new retail development in the core needs to be flush with the street with parking in the back.

[txstate]

Because Hays and Comal county want incentives.

[verybadgnome]

Here's an amazing set of facts.............On the 110 mile stretch IH-35 between Georgetown and San Antonio there are on average over 100 fatalities a year (Page 1):

http://asarail.org/ASA_Annual_Report.pdf

Versus the Shinkansen bullet train in Japan (Shinkansen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) that at just over 1500 miles has had one fatality in 46 years.

Yes the correct comparison would be fatalities per X passenger miles but no doubt if would be in the hundredths if not thousandths of times more. Maybe we should try to look beyond initial costs when evaluating alternative transportation.

[BevoLJ]

Except cost is a big part of it. The population and GDP of Japan is a only a tad more than Austin and SA combined. =)

Austin has grown an incredible amount recently. It is easy to ask how such a rail system isn't in place yet, but Austin is still really not all that big a city as a Metro area. Its MSA is barely in the top 40. So to ask why it is yet to have something like this is not really fair. However Austin has been growing by 40-50% every decade. From a half million in 1980 to 1.8 million now. So to ask why there isn't something in the works now I think is very fair. Luckily I believe there is. That Lone Star Rail system that has been linked has been in the news quite a bit the past month, so that is great news.

[pbnj07]

When I first heard of the LSR system, I thought it was a great idea. Then I read it will take 90 minutes from downtown Austin to downtown San Antonio, with stops in San Marcos and New Braunfels.

90 minutes? C'mon, man. Why in the heck would anyone take that train instead of driving?

[CptnRn]

I just read some interesting comments on high speed rail by Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post, he was quoted in the Week.

The Obama administration has proposed building high-speed rail lines connecting 13 major corridors, committing $10.5 billion for the preliminary work; the ultimate cost could easily reach $200 billion. "What would we get for this huge investment? Nada. Zip." Here's why. America is not Europe, with people traveling between major population centers clustered closely together. High-speed rail would cater to a very small subset of people - numbered in the tens of thousands - who make occasional trips between urban centers like New York and Washington, or San Francisco and Los Angeles. But in this vast sprawling nation, some 120 million Americans drive to wrk each day: most traffic consists of these local commuters. Plane travel wouldn't noticeably decrease, either. So high-speed rail would simply provide a gargantuan federal subsidy for "a tiny group of travelers," with no real environmental or practical gain. "It's a triumph of politically expedient fiction over logic and evidence."

IN another article he writes:

Robert J. Samuelson - High-Speed Rail Plans Defy Experience - washingtonpost.com
What works in Europe and Asia won't in the United States. Even abroad, passenger trains are subsidized. But the subsidies are more justifiable because geography and energy policies differ.

Densities are much higher, and high densities favor rail with direct connections between heavily populated city centers and business districts. In Japan, density is 880 people per square mile; it's 653 in Britain, 611 in Germany and 259 in France. By contrast, plentiful land in the United States has led to suburbanized homes, offices and factories. Density is 86 people per square mile. Trains can't pick up most people where they live and work and take them to where they want to go. Cars can.

Distances also matter. America is big; trips are longer. Beyond 400 to 500 miles, fast trains can't compete with planes. Finally, Europe and Japan tax car transportation more heavily, pushing people to trains. In August 2008, notes the GAO, gasoline in Japan was $6.50 a gallon. Americans regard $4 a gallon as an outrage. Proposals for stiff gasoline taxes (advocated by many, including me) go nowhere.

In his article Robert Samuelson refers us to Edward L. Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard who published this 4 part series, a cost benefit analysis of high-speed rail. " Glaeser made generous assumptions for trains ("Personally, I almost always prefer trains to driving") and still found that costs vastly outweigh benefits."

Is High-Speed Rail a Good Public Investment? - NYTimes.com

Running the Numbers on High-Speed Trains - NYTimes.com
I’m going to frame the discussion around an imaginary 240-mile link between Dallas and Houston, but the basic formula for direct costs and benefit is general:

Number of Riders times (Benefit per Rider minus Variable Costs per Rider) minus Fixed Costs.
...see the full article for the detailed assumptions which he admits is biased in favor of rail...
Now it’s just down to multiplying: 1.5 million trips times $68 a trip means $102 million for benefits minus operating costs. Annual capital costs came in $648 million, more than six times that amount.

The benefit calculates out to $102 million at an annual cost of $648 million. More then 6 times the benefit! " then annual costs would exceed the direct benefits to riders by $546 million."

What Would High-Speed Rail Do to Suburban Sprawl? - NYTimes.com

Moreover, the story of Ciudad Real should make us question the presumption that rail will centralize. If a Dallas-Houston line stops somewhere between the two cities, and fosters the growth of a new exurb, the result will be more, not less, sprawl.

Despite the lack of any positive evidence linking centralization to high-speed rail, I certainly accept that there is a great deal of uncertainty. To give rail the benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume that high-speed rail will cause 100,000 households to switch from suburb to city in both Dallas and Houston. This change would create extra, annual environmental benefits of $29.7 million. These benefits would be real, but they would still do little to offset the $524 million or $401 million net annual loss discussed above.

[DarkWolf]

Originally Posted by CptnRn

I just read some interesting comments on high speed rail by Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post, he was quoted in the Week.



IN another article he writes:



In his article Robert Samuelson refers us to Edward L. Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard who published this 4 part series, a cost benefit analysis of high-speed rail. " Glaeser made generous assumptions for trains ("Personally, I almost always prefer trains to driving") and still found that costs vastly outweigh benefits."

Is High-Speed Rail a Good Public Investment? - NYTimes.com



The benefit calculates out to $102 million at an annual cost of $648 million. More then 6 times the benefit! " then annual costs would exceed the direct benefits to riders by $546 million."

I wish ppl would stop using Asia and Europe as a blue print for this country. They should use the Northeast as a blue print the Acela has eaten away at a huge chunk of the Business Air Market , and there purchasing More Trains to keep up with Demand. The Whole Amtrak Northeastern network runs on profits. I love the anti-Rail ppl , they never mention the Cost / Benefit of building more Highways..... The Acela isn't even True High Speed , if its profitable now i can't wait to find out what happens when they upgrade it to True HSR. HSR is mean't for long distances the Northeast Corridor line is 500 miles long.....if you factor in all services that use it , about 700,000 daily commuters use it. Last year the Northeast corridor during the Thanksgiving Holiday was pushed to the breaking point 68,000 ppl used Northeast Regional / Acela. About 200,000 used the Northeastern network , if it can work here it can work anywhere. Half the Northeast is sprawl , half is like Europe and dense. The New or Restored Rail corridors are causing Dense Growth not sprawly growth. I think Dallas is in the process of getting that start at the DART stations.

[JoninATX]

With 4+million people living in the Austin- San Antonio region it's only a matter of time. A better Solution would be better planning for sure. light rail in both Cities and a bullet or Commuter rail between the two

[Trainwreck20]

Although I personally have nothing against light rail from Austin-SA, I doubt I (or my family) would use it for much of anything...maybe once a year (probably less). Not a lot of reason for me to go to SA on a regular basis, and I don't know personally know anyone else that makes that trek now, and it is not likely that they would with a light rail, either.

I possibly would use rapid transit to Houston a little more, maybe two or three times a year, due to work down there and the fact that the extra distance makes it a bit more beneficial compared to driving.

[G Grasshopper]

I'm all for mass transit, but I do have a question about this train, in that you need a complete system for that one mode to work well. What happens once you get to SA? Do you call a taxi, or is the mass transit good enough that you can get wherever you want to go. If you need a car to get around once you get into the city, then you need to take a car to the city. So how many people would want to come to Austin on the bullet train if they couldn't get around without a car once they got here?