In the hierarchy of dumb projects, building a high-speed rail line to connect two cities that are just 32 miles a part would rank very high. Yet the Texas Department of Transportation and the Federal Railroad Administration are proposing just that: a line from Dallas to Ft. Worth. They are currently asking for comments on the scope of the environmental impact statement, due next Monday, December 15.
Not surprisingly, the biggest beneficiary of this project, so far, is Parsons Brinckerhoff, which seems to have its fingers in every ridiculous rail project in the country. One of the company’s employees is acting as “communications manager” for the project and delivering PowerPoint presentations about it to the public.
While a 32-mile high-speed rail line may seem ridiculous, proponents see it as just one part of a much larger high-speed rail line from San Antonio to Dallas to Houston, with possible extensions to Monterey, Mexico and Oklahoma City. Yet a lot of emphasis is being given to the Dallas-Ft. Worth segment, with its own commission and web site, its own environmental impact statement, and PR campaign.
The idea of high-speed rail in the “Texas triangle” formed by San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston has been around for several decades. Each time it comes up, sensible people attempt to debunk it. Yet there is so much money to be made doing studies that are often largely funded by the federal government that it’s not going to go away.
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and when amortized capital costs are counted it would have been less expensive to give every round-trip commuter a new Toyota Prius every other year than to start and operate this line.
The notion that a high-speed rail line that is super-expensive to both build and maintain can be “financially viable” is absurd. But, critics sensibly ask, why not just run some commuter train on express schedules to see how sensitive people are to speed? Currently, every train makes eight stops between end points, greatly slowing average speeds.
Nor would high-speed rail be environmentally sustainable. It takes huge amounts of energy to build new infrastructure, and lots more to accelerate trains–most of which weigh about 2,500 pounds per seat–to high speeds. By comparison, a Toyota Prius weighs about 600 pounds per seat, while the latest Boeing 737 weighs about a thousand pounds per seat.
Those who want to submit scoping comments by next Monday should urge TX DOT to objectively evaluate all of the alternatives. In a couple of decades, cars are going to be twice as fuel-efficient as they are today. Self-driving technologies will greatly increase safety and reduce the time costs of driving.
For intercity distances like Dallas to Houston or Dallas to San Antonio, improving the speed of airport screening would be a far more cost-effective way of increasing travel speeds. There are currently more than fifty flights a day between Dallas and Houston and fares start at around $75, a price a high-speed train could not possibly match without huge operating subsidies.
High-speed rail in Texas is a dumb idea, and from Dallas to Ft. Worth even dumber. It is being studied because the Obama administration freely gave out taxpayers’ money for inane studies that will be completed in the hope that some future Congress will somehow find billions to spend on a nonsensical technology. TX DOT should save taxpayers money by putting a halt to these idiotic studies.
If there were a market for it there would be a Megabus running the route….and i believe Megabus has exactly two stops in the DFW area: Downtown Dallas and the Megabus Barn.
The Anti-planner should investigate this a little more closely before passing judgement. There are actually two different projects which the press tends to lump together. The larger project is Texas Central Railway, an entirely private affair which plans to run a Shinkhansen N700 from northwest Houston to south Dallas. The investors are adamantly opposed to utilizing government funds to build this line. The other line is an entirely government funded affair to attempt to extend the Houston Dallas line to Fort Worth. Texas Central Railway has stated publicly it will invest no funds extending the line to Fort Worth, so Fort Worth leaders are pushing this line because they feel left out. The Dallas to Houston line is not a dumb idea. Southwest, American, Delta, and United, collectively fly 96 flights a day on the short haul between Dallas and Houston and would prefer to dedicate some of the gates for longer haul routes. Additionally, I-45 is past capacity. A private rail line, connecting Dallas and Houston would provide the Texas Department of Highways some relief on future expansions of the corridor.
The larger project is Texas Central Railway, an entirely private affair which plans to run a Shinkhansen N700 from northwest Houston to south Dallas. The investors are adamantly opposed to utilizing government funds to build this line.
I have read this before. If they are truly serious about never touching the public till, best of luck to them. There is absolutely no reason that the government should be behind every rail transit project, except for cronyism and opportunities to waste our money.
Geez. Let’s not let real facts get in the way of a fairy tale.
Average airfare Dallas-Houston is $106 each way . http://www.farereport.com/TX/Houston_TX_Dallas_TX.html
Yes on occasions you can find a fare in the $70 range. Good luck with that.
A walk-up fare for business people who want to travel Dec. 11 from Dallas to Houston and return the same day is $416.00. Returning a week later is $388 on the Southwest Airlines site.
How do you spell f l i g h t d e l a y s ? If I’m in business I don’t want to waste time at an airport. I want to hop on a train and get to Houston in 90 minutes.
So a private company wants to build and operate a high speed rail line Dallas to Houston without begging for government funding. We should all rejoice at that.
Texas Central’s business plan did not include a link from Dallas to Fort Worth and that’s the 32 miles that cities want to connect. if the people in the region want to build it, let them at it. The Dallas-Fort Worth area had the worst traffic congestion in 2010 http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2010/12/15/report-dallas-has-worst-commute-in-the-country/ and it hasn’t gotten any better with more highways built.
So how many more trains shall we scrap and buy every rider a Prius like the antiplanner suggests? Yeah, let’s put more cars on the road. Smart move.
And here’s the dirty little secret. That gas tax you pay at the pump only covers about 50% of the true cost of building and maintaining roads. Your other pocket gets picked for the rest of the funding. It’s called the General Fund. A highly inefficient way to fund roadways so we close them all down immediately.
railadvo,
Thanks for your thoughts. I checked kayak.com for January 7, 2015, and the vast majority of Houston-Dallas flights were $75. The lowest price I can find for the Amtrak Acela is well over twice that much and they can run well over $350.
As far as the gas tax goes, you are right that it doesn’t pay for everything, but wrong in your implication that subsidies cover half the cost of roads. Historically, table HF-10 of Highway Statistics reveals that almost all subsidies are at the local level, they amount to about 25 percent of the cost of highways, and this is partly offset by large diversions of federal and state highway user fees to transit and other non-highway programs.
I’m willing to pay all of the costs of driving out of gas taxes, tolls, and other user fees. Are you willing to pay all the costs of high-speed rail out of your rail fares? When you answer that, keep in mind that the rail fares needed to cover all of the costs would be at least twice airfares and probably much more.
Jardinero1,
I’ll believe that a Dallas-Houston high-speed rail line can be privately funded only after it is built and operating without subsidies. With one or two exceptions, that hasn’t happened anywhere in the world, and certainly not in a place as thinly populated as Dallas and Houston.
If the airlines are so frustrated about dedicating that many gates to Dallas-Houston service, all they need to do is fly bigger airplanes on half the frequencies. But there is very little chance that a high-speed rail line would take the pressure off either the airlines or I-45. The numbers just aren’t there to make a noticeable difference.
AP, Time will tell.
“buy every rider a Prius like the antiplanner suggests”
Just another strawman argument from another sockpuppet.
Of course the AP is not advocating the government buying a Prius for riders. He’s simply saying it would be less expensive than building rail.
“…it would have been less expensive to give every round-trip commuter a new Toyota Prius every other year”
Stop distorting.
“The Dallas to Houston line is not a dumb idea. Southwest, American, Delta, and United, collectively fly 96 flights a day on the short haul between Dallas and Houston and would prefer to dedicate some of the gates for longer haul routes.
”
~Jardinero1
No and yes. Their current preference is clearly to use current slots and current gates for all those flights. What they prefer to do in the future isn’t quite so clear. What does it cost them to spread their bets in this case? They don’t have to commit hundreds of millions over years or decades to build a new airport, add more gates at a current facility, etc.
Their cost is only have to publicly advocate that someone else build someone a system they would have the _option_ of using to route passengers in the future. That doesn’t mean that all things even, this would be their preference. Nor does it mean they highly value this choice. They’re chiming in because it’s a low cost thing to do.
I’m still not sure what you mean by subsidy.
Antiplanner is it right to view drivers as a cohesive group that way? There are exurban areas that per driver require large subsidies, and dense areas that can pay for themselves. The gas tax creates a slush fund that politicians use to pay for expensive road boondoggles that can’t support themselves. You hide that when you group all drivers together. Tolling limited access highways is feasible in a way it wasn’t when the interstate system was created. The gas taxes should be retired and tolls introduced, each highway would be able to support itself. All other roads could be funded out of property taxes paid by residents in the immediate area.
There are exurban areas that per driver require large subsidies, and dense areas that can pay for themselves.
Such as…?
“TX DOT says its goal is to have “a financially viable, safe, reliable, and environmentally sustainable premium express passenger rail service.”
If they want a financially viable passenger rail service, then why are they getting involved?
Tolling limited access highways is feasible in a way it wasn’t when the interstate system was created. The gas taxes should be retired and tolls introduced, each highway would be able to support itself. All other roads could be funded out of property taxes paid by residents in the immediate area.
Huh? A large part of the road network consists of roads that are neither limited-access highways nor are restricted to a single jurisdiction. Think of most state highways,. for example. It’s perfectly sensible to use gas taxes to fund these types of facilities.
The larger project is Texas Central Railway, an entirely private affair which plans to run a Shinkhansen N700 from northwest Houston to south Dallas.
In other words, it won’t actually serve the central parts of these two cities, but will stop at the periphery, requiring a transfer to complete one’s journey. As for it being a “private affair”, are they counting on using public right-of-way at no cost, or are they planning on large-scale property acquisition along this corridor?
Hello MJ, They have narrowed it down to two routes. One follows an existing Burlington Northern right of way and the other follows a utility easement. They claim that they would have to condemn no more than 6000 acres, worst case, with either alignment. The construction of the line is being financed by Shinkhansen and the Bank of Japan at approximately zero interest with the idea that there would be an equity offering to extinguish the debt, five to ten years after operations have commenced.
What is the central part of a city is a matter of some debate. The likely location of the Houston station, the Northwest Transit Center, is actually very near the center of the metropolitan geographic, population and employment centerpoint, though not downtown. Nearly all Houstonians do not work downtown. Nearly all Houstonians do not take mass transit. So the location of the station works better for drivers than either Hobby or Intercontinental if you are traveling to Dallas. I really don’t know anything about Dallas or what is the best station location for them.
To look at where most Houston employees work, this is a really cool map. You have to search for Houston: http://definingdowntown.org/maps/
To see where Houstonians live, this is a really cool distribution map. Densities are better reflected if you switch to gray scale. http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html
After comparing the maps to the site of the Northwest Transit Center in Houston, you have to agree that it’s not a bad location.
They have narrowed it down to two routes. One follows an existing Burlington Northern right of way and the other follows a utility easement. They claim that they would have to condemn no more than 6000 acres, worst case, with either alignment.
Who is ‘they’? TXDOT? I thought they weren’t going to be involved in the intercity project?
MJ,
In my previous comment, I refer exclusively to the privately funded Houston – Dallas route. I would point out that the millions being spent on the studies for that city pair are entirely from the investors in the project. It is a requirement to obtain regulatory approval.
The DFW intercity route is a taxpayer funded study. The DFW intercity high speed alignment is a non-starter for the reasons which the Anti-planner already stated. It is an exercise funded solely to placate interests in Arlington and Fort Worth.