High speed train Dallas to Houston (San Antonio, Anton: car rental, houses, neighborhoods)

[Spade]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

Nope. Native Houstonian. The management of the fund is really bad, but the premise is very good!



Houston badly needs a San Antonio line over a DFW line due to the theme parks that everyone likes to visit during the summer and the holidays. Turns out this private company wants to make Dallas the hub, so you'll have to transfer in Dallas to get to San Antonio. Does not make sense!

Wait a minute. You do realize that DFW has theme parks as well, right?

[KerrTown]

Originally Posted by Spade

Wait a minute. You do realize that DFW has theme parks as well, right?

SeaWorld breaks the tie.

[nana053]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

SeaWorld breaks the tie.

Not really
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/mo...orld.html?_r=0

Seaworld is trying to discredit the film and do damage control, but...

https://www.facebook.com/BlackfishFi...99462060206779

[2nd trick op]

Originally Posted by lipbalm

Key word here is "useful". Amtrak in this area is a JOKE. Train is always late since they don't actually own the tracks and so the freight trains have the right of way.

There is a huge gap in understanding between what the public has been led to believe by High Speed Rail advocates, and what current technology can actually deliver. The much vaunted French and Japanese systems were essentially "built from scratch", and this was possible only because Japan was still largely in ruins at he time the shinkansen project, first opened in 1964, was envisioned -- and because the French economy and culture are dominated by one city -- Paris.

Here in America, we do have markets for which High Speed Rail is a practical option, the Boston-New York-Washington "Northeast Corridor" being the prime example, but this has of necessity been built upon an older system, and any number of tunnels, drawbridges and other obstacles make the promised 150 MPH top speed possible for only a small portion of the total distance. The promised 200+ MPH speeds cannot materialize here without enormous infrastructural investment -- perhaps $150 billion as indicated in current studies.

California has committed itself to a Sacramento-Los Angeles-San Diego project, much of which will operate on new right-of-way in the flat Central Valley, so I expect to see some serious improvement over the Acela system, but it will still be a long-term project -- especially as regards negotiating both the approaches to the cities, and a range of mountains between the Central Valley and the L. A. Basin.

And a number of projects involving new commuter or intermediate-distance lines are under way, with the eventual prospects of higher speeds which will offer savings over driving and/or short-distance flying, but it needs to be recognized at all times that the time horizons are long and the initial capital costs very high.

A handful of nations -- The United States, Canada, China and the component states of the former Soviet Union -- have rail networks built primarily for freight. Almost all the rest designed them for passengers -- and fortified their decisions with a tax system that heavily penalized the ownership of a personal vehicle. That disparity, and the limited adaptability for mass transit outside the major cities, lies at the heart of the current transportation dispute.

[KerrTown]

Originally Posted by nana053

Not really
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/mo...orld.html?_r=0

Seaworld is trying to discredit the film and do damage control, but...

https://www.facebook.com/BlackfishFi...99462060206779

That's beside the point. I was talking about proximity. Why visit a city with one theme park where there are two available, one of them being in two other cities (San Diego and Orlando; tourist cities)?

Dallas is much farther than Houston than San Antonio. I live in Katy, so San Antonio is much closer to me.

But hands down, San Antonio is a better tourist city than Dallas. The Alamo, San Fernando Cathedral and Main Plaza (Béxar), Natural Bridge Caverns, and Schlitterbahn are other attractions. The scenery of the northern rim of the metro is also amazing!

Surprised that the focus is on theme parks when visiting other cities. Nobody visits other landmarks instead of those tourist traps?

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

Dallas is much farther than Houston than San Antonio. I live in Katy, so San Antonio is much closer to me.

FYI,
everybody in Houston doesn't live in Katy

[Spade]

Not to mention the ridership will be much higher between Dallas and Houston than Houston and San Antonio.

[dynamo fan]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

That's beside the point. I was talking about proximity. Why visit a city with one theme park where there are two available, one of them being in two other cities (San Diego and Orlando; tourist cities)?

Dallas is much farther than Houston than San Antonio. I live in Katy, so San Antonio is much closer to me.

But hands down, San Antonio is a better tourist city than Dallas. The Alamo, San Fernando Cathedral and Main Plaza (Béxar), Natural Bridge Caverns, and Schlitterbahn are other attractions. The scenery of the northern rim of the metro is also amazing!

Surprised that the focus is on theme parks when visiting other cities. Nobody visits other landmarks instead of those tourist traps?

All Texas cities have little in the way of mass transit. So even if you took a train to one, you could possibly rack up a high bill trying to go from the hotel to the different attractions. San Antonio's attractions (theme parks, historical sites, caverns) are not close to each other. This is much easier accomplished with a car.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by 2nd trick op

There is a huge gap in understanding between what the public has been led to believe by High Speed Rail advocates, and what current technology can actually deliver. The much vaunted French and Japanese systems were essentially "built from scratch", and this was possible only because Japan was still largely in ruins at he time the shinkansen project, first opened in 1964, was envisioned -- and because the French economy and culture are dominated by one city -- Paris.

Here in America, we do have markets for which High Speed Rail is a practical option, the Boston-New York-Washington "Northeast Corridor" being the prime example, but this has of necessity been built upon an older system, and any number of tunnels, drawbridges and other obstacles make the promised 150 MPH top speed possible for only a small portion of the total distance. The promised 200+ MPH speeds cannot materialize here without enormous infrastructural investment -- perhaps $150 billion as indicated in current studies.

California has committed itself to a Sacramento-Los Angeles-San Diego project, much of which will operate on new right-of-way in the flat Central Valley, so I expect to see some serious improvement over the Acela system, but it will still be a long-term project -- especially as regards negotiating both the approaches to the cities, and a range of mountains between the Central Valley and the L. A. Basin.

And a number of projects involving new commuter or intermediate-distance lines are under way, with the eventual prospects of higher speeds which will offer savings over driving and/or short-distance flying, but it needs to be recognized at all times that the time horizons are long and the initial capital costs very high.

A handful of nations -- The United States, Canada, China and the component states of the former Soviet Union -- have rail networks built primarily for freight. Almost all the rest designed them for passengers -- and fortified their decisions with a tax system that heavily penalized the ownership of a personal vehicle. That disparity, and the limited adaptability for mass transit outside the major cities, lies at the heart of the current transportation dispute.

Home - Texas Central

What you are saying is not relevant to this line. Their estimate is $10 billion privately financed and completed by 2021 with speeds up to 205 mph.

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by dynamo fan

All Texas cities have little in the way of mass transit. So even if you took a train to one, you could possibly rack up a high bill trying to go from the hotel to the different attractions. San Antonio's attractions (theme parks, historical sites, caverns) are not close to each other. This is much easier accomplished with a car.

It's not that difficult to setup bus lines that connect hubs around the city to make this work