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

[mikey1984]

Originally Posted by inthecut

Good last point..not to slight San Antonio, but Austin itself would be a more vital loci, being the capitol and a far more popular place to go for recreation...San Antonio would have to be a spur jutting off the triangle of Austin-Houstin-DFW...The SA Spur would prob be built last as an adjunct to the main triangle...other Texas metros, possibly even El Paso, could be built as time goes on...A spur that goes to the Mexican Border at a major crossing would make sense as well, for tourism and work related travel on both ends.....

The two cities with the highest likelhood of usage should be built first...I would have to sat DFW-Houston would be the obvious first connection. After that Austin-Houston can increase it, and Austin -DFW would complete it..the spur off the triangle to San Antonio would be built last.

San Antonio attracts much more leisure or recreational travelers from within Texas than Austin. The Alamo City attracts nearly 27 million annual visitors, it would only make since to include San Antonio from the start.

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by 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?

Everyone pretty much agrees that you can't get around Austin without having a car. I don't believe San Antonio is much better. So it wouldn't make much sense to take the rail to get to either place when you are still going to need a car once you get there. Businesses in Austin are located all over town, same is true for San Antonio. Riding the rail to a central location in either place not going to get most people to their final destination.

[electricninja]

Originally Posted by thesonofgray

2. If we followed a rule that no one should be made to "subsidize" public services they don't use as much as others, this nation would fall apart (and I'd say most if not all nations would fall apart).

That's total BS. Public services that protect property at some scale, i.e. a police or military, are pretty much all the U.S. had en route to superpower status. Ok, you had a post office and local fire departments, but you have already seen successful private counterparts to those. It was only after we created the wasteful "safety net" that we actually started convincing ourselves that we needed it, and then the class wars began.

The great railroads of the 19th century? At least 3/4 were privately built.

Most if not all nations don't fall apart, they get conquered. That's why we have a Constitution. So the states wouldn't get conquered or go to war against each other.

[verybadgnome]

Originally Posted by electricninja

That's total BS. Public services that protect property at some scale, i.e. a police or military, are pretty much all the U.S. had en route to superpower status. Ok, you had a post office and local fire departments, but you have already seen successful private counterparts to those. It was only after we created the wasteful "safety net" that we actually started convincing ourselves that we needed it, and then the class wars began.

The great railroads of the 19th century? At least 3/4 were privately built.

Most if not all nations don't fall apart, they get conquered. That's why we have a Constitution. So the states wouldn't get conquered or go to war against each other.

We also had a public primary and secondary school system. And it wasn't the private sector that got us to the moon either..........

[JERiv]

Originally Posted by electricninja

That's total BS. Public services that protect property at some scale, i.e. a police or military, are pretty much all the U.S. had en route to superpower status. Ok, you had a post office and local fire departments, but you have already seen successful private counterparts to those. It was only after we created the wasteful "safety net" that we actually started convincing ourselves that we needed it, and then the class wars began.

The great railroads of the 19th century? At least 3/4 were privately built.

Most if not all nations don't fall apart, they get conquered. That's why we have a Constitution. So the states wouldn't get conquered or go to war against each other.

Wow. That's such a bad argument. "blah blah blah and then the class wars began". A bit of an apocalyptic tone there, huh?

You do realize that most services in the US began as private enterprise? Problem was that the "private" enterprise only protected those with money. So the rich had security (aka police), firemen, and pretty much anything they wanted. Everyone else got diddly squat, and got stomped on.

That's why "class wars" have always existed. Be it an Egyptian slave, a Roman seamstress, a British cobbler, a colonial tea seller in Boston, a Wild West ranch hand, or a Massey mine worker, the "poor" kept getting taken advantage off, and had no recourse. The guy with the $$$ made the rules and literally got away with murder. Eventually, that leads to conflict.

Why do you think Europe doesn't have ruling monarchies anymore? Why do you think we kicked Britain's butt? All our history is riddled with conflicts where the rich oppressed the rest, and the end result was some sort of uprising.

Government had to get involved because without having the "safety net" you so despise, we wouldn't be able to have a working democracy. We'd still have government overthrows (ala Latin/South America or certain Asian countries) every decade or two. Wanna know why the safety net grows every few decades? Read the previous paragraphs.

It's not exactly a difficult thing to understand. If you actually thought about it, anyway.

And the usual throwing the Constitution into the mix... It's like a sinner quoting God and the bible. Just because he's quoting God and the bible don't make him a saint, or mean he understand anything of what he's talking about.

[Bo]

Originally Posted by centralaustinite

The costs are staggering and Southwest Airlines has (in the past) and would (in the future) put a lot of money into lobbying state officials to make sure that type of rail is never built in Texas.

Just this month, Texas Monthly has a brief bit on SW airlines and this was mentioned and the response was something along the lines of "we prefer that folks fly."

That was their response 20 years ago when high speed rail between Dallas, Houston, SA, was proposed and that is their position now.

I was prepared to make the same point, but centralaustinite did it very well.

Don't underestimate the lobbying clout of the state's largest domestic airline.

[Bobby Harris]

The trains would have to arrive at the stations at the same time going different directions, and have a time period to load and off load, then depart. And frequency is a must. The problem with the Capital Metro Austin rail is it doesn't go to the airport from dowtown, and doesn't run at times to cater the evening crowd (till 2 a.m). Then it would be like the timelines like that light rail in Sacramento. It was nice to leave the bar in downtown Sacramento and not have to worry about driving drunk, just holding myself up on the trains, because of their braking trying to pull me down. But 6 million people live in the San Antonio-Austin area. And IH-35 is never going to be a true transportation cooridor until it has a rail line that services it. All that open land to build it, build it and they will come..

[Bobby Harris]

China built a wall over centuries. We need generations of souls to fulfill our qwest, to go deep. Johnny Quest was one of fav cartoons. This corresponds with the feeling to live under water in tubes that connect to labs that support the techs and engineers. The other sectors will have entertainment districts and the resort pods. That way hurricanes pass over 100 ft to 1000 ft above. This elimenates catching and packing then shipping seafood. You are seasood.

[orbius]

Originally Posted by electricninja

That's total BS. Public services that protect property at some scale, i.e. a police or military, are pretty much all the U.S. had en route to superpower status. Ok, you had a post office and local fire departments, but you have already seen successful private counterparts to those. It was only after we created the wasteful "safety net" that we actually started convincing ourselves that we needed it, and then the class wars began.

The great railroads of the 19th century? At least 3/4 were privately built.

Most if not all nations don't fall apart, they get conquered. That's why we have a Constitution. So the states wouldn't get conquered or go to war against each other.

The wasteful 'saftey net' stopped millions of people from starving in the Great Depression.
There would be no America today without it. Either there would have been a facist coup or a revolution of some sort.
So tell me it was wasteful again, a reasonable saftey net makes modern civilization possible. You know civilization the thing that makes it possible for all these wealthy people in the country to prosper.

As far as the bullet train. I'm afraid Austin would be the last leg on any light rail that is built in Texas. The most economically feasible route is from Houston to Dallas via College Station of all places. Then at some point in the a down leg from the Houston to Dallas route would connect to Austin and then San Antonio.

[verybadgnome]

Originally Posted by CptnRn

Everyone pretty much agrees that you can't get around Austin without having a car. I don't believe San Antonio is much better. So it wouldn't make much sense to take the rail to get to either place when you are still going to need a car once you get there. Businesses in Austin are located all over town, same is true for San Antonio. Riding the rail to a central location in either place not going to get most people to their final destination.

Regarding high speed rail the same could be said about plane travel but airports are even worse in that they are usually in the boonies versus a train station that could be downtown.

For non-high speed trains between Austin and SA there are 3 proposed stops in Williamson, 4 in Travis and 2 in Hays:

Lone Star Rail District | Proposed LSTAR Route Map

The key in either case is that there be tie-ins with public transportation. If someone was coming from SA for the day, getting let off DT would allow them to use Car2go anytime or take the train on a weekday.

And the point about SW is a good one. As in most corporations they are more concerned about the validity of their business model and stock price than the welfare of Texans. If there was a time when a RT to Dallas was the same price and duration on HSR as a plane there would be no question as to which I would choose.