- cross-posted to:
- urbanism@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- urbanism@hexbear.net
President Joe Biden is reportedly seeking to revive a project that would construct a high-speed railway from Houston to Dallas in Texas utilizing Japanese bullet trains.
According to a Reuters report on Tuesday, citing unnamed administration sources, the White House is looking to make an announcement on the project following talks between Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington, D.C., this week.
The Japanese government and the White House declined to comment on the report, though the project has seen renewed support from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told KXAS in Fort Worth on Sunday: “We believe in this.”
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Texas signed up first because it has “bullet” in the title.
I’d prefer some other state to get it than Texas. If Texas is going to deny federal money for unemployment and for healthcare, then Texas doesn’t deserve federal money for other good projects.
And this is coming from someone in Texas who would benefit from it.
Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott has told state employees to try to avoid federal money because it might come with strings that require treating non rich and non whites as human.
Remember when Greg Abbott had a tantrum and basically shut down the Texas-Mexico border to most road traffic and fucked over all the rest of the US who was depending on products to come from Mexico?
Let Texas feel what it would be like to secede.
While I agree that Texas is not the most “deserving,” if it gets rapidly improving infrastructure it will probably at least flip into a swing state, with more liberals than fascists. “Punishing” them just lets them play victim.
I wish they were more than playing sometimes. If they’re going to claim persecution then we should persecute them a little.
is accelerationism everywhere now? just let a single good thing happen geez
They’re gonna be real pissed when they find out somebody used the word bullet to dupe them into building public transport.
Had to lol at this. Too true. Whaddaya ya mean there’s no shootin’ on this train?!
It’ll get canned as soon as Texans realize it’s not called a bullet train because of any involvement with guns.
Just make the station look like a giant gun
Spam a bunch of eagles, military memorabilia, guns, and US flags everywhere and they’ll be all over it. Bonus points if the whole train is eagle themed.
Ok, hear me out… Train station in the shape of a bald eagle with the covered track area leading out shaped like a gun penis for the eagle. The engine is shaped like a bullet, and the cars all have flames down the sides so it goes extra fast.
Texas figured it out?
Texas?
Yeah, this is a real low point. This one hurts.
They had to use > bullet> train to get them onboard.
so you just shoot the train? I gotta see this gun!
No one else got your Good Place reference so I just wanted to say, have some frozen yoghurt.
Maybe it’s a diesel bullet train and they’re “running coal”?
Biden shouldn’t be doing shit for Texas. He should try push this mainstream across the country. But Texas wants to secede Abbott probably find away to make this not happen anyway and funds will be stolen and wasted.
Umm. Not really, it’s because Amtrak is involved now in Texas and the Build Back Better Act has sent money for several projects not just Houston to Dallas. Cali HSR, Las Vegas to LAX, Orlando to Tampa, Seatle-Tahcoma-Portland, and Atlanta to Charlotte all got funds. All these projects (with the exception of Cali) are using federal/private funds, so state governors can’t really pull the plug (Cali HSR is a constitutionally mandated project approved by the voters of the state… to use state funds).
So I mentioned the odd dichotomy that Texas has in another post
Hey, trust me, I know how this shit goes. I’m in Kansas.
Plot twist. The train will be loaded into a giant gun and literally fired like a bullet because Texas.
I still think NYC-Chicago is the real test of high speed rail in this country. A route people want to take, that’s far enough to fly, between two cities where car ownership is optional.
I’m glad Dallas-Houston is happening but I wonder how much traffic it will get. In my midwestern mind they’re both just “texas big city”
It’s not surprising that the first city pair would be a commonly traveled route with cheap flat land in between. Once that’s demonstrated to work, they can start trying it for cities where the need to purchase rights for the route will be more expensive, and on terrain where long straight segments are more challenging to construct.
I wonder how much traffic it will get.
This source says average, about 24,000 people drive between the two cities any given day, and there are about 30 commercial flights per day between the cities. That sounds like a decent amount of potential demand.
But how walkable are Dallas and Houston? I think the success of this is predicated on that, because if people can’t get around without a car, they’ll take one with them.
Still though, pretty cool. Sucks it’ll be in Texas but progress is progress.
Texas is barely walkable from the back of the giant parking lot into the store.
Depends on where you are, but with that 30 flight number there’s definitely plenty of people that aren’t bringing their cars with them.
Dallas proper has some light rail around downtown with a couple lines that travel outward, and even a train that goes from Downtown Dallas to downtown Fort Worth. It’s still difficult to get to a lot of places outside downtown, the American Airlines Center, and the State Fair ground though.
Houston I think has some buses, but it would also be difficult to get too far from downtown.
Houston sometimes has sidewalks. Sometimes.
Houston has some light rail also.
Well fortunately we have Uber, so people can take Ubers around. It’s less energy efficient than each person having their own car, but it’s more parking efficient which leads to economic viability.
Are those flights because of hub relationships? Where it will still be somehow cheaper to fly with a hop than to fly direct out of the hub?
I once lived 1hr from an airport and 2hrs from a hub. It was always cheaper to drive to the closest airport and fly to the hub. Absolutely annoying.
Yes, a big chunk of the flight demand probably comes from the fact that each is a hub for a major airline (American Airlines has its big hub in DFW, and United has one of its major hubs in IAH).
Still there are a lot of flights between the two cities for passengers who are starting and stopping their journeys there.
I mean, getting out of Texas as fast as possible is an admirable goal for the future.
Crossing the great emptiness of it is a great starting point. Like building a river backwards, starting with a delta at multiple cities.
So, let’s say such a train takes the same security as amtrack does, which is to say very little.
If the train is a viable option it would need to compete on time but there’s a caveat. The flight between the two cities is 2 and a half hours. Not including getting to the airport early, going through security, and waiting for your flight. So we can reasonably say it’s 4 and a half hours of down time.
The distance the train would travel is just over 700 miles. A 200 mile per hour bullet train at best possible speed does that in 4-5 hours. Assuming it’s express, and there are no delays.
If the train is faster and similar in cost it’s a no brainer, take the train every time. If it’s more expensive, which is will be if it isn’t subsidized, then it won’t succeed. People will see the longer travel time and not consider security and waiting around, and just buy the cheaper ticket. Then curse ass spirit air gets them stuck on the tarmac.
I’d pay more to take a train in many situations. Much more comfortable, less hassle, lower emissions.
Same. I don’t fly but love taking trains, even if it takes longer.
You know they’d somehow figure out how to make it more uncomfortable to eek out more $$$ by fitting more people.
I’ve taken some of the longer train routes on the east coast, and they’re quite comfortable. Occasionally full, but it’s a lot easier to add space comfortably on a train by adding a car than it is in an aircraft.
Seems like a pretty pessimistic view…
It is. I don’t usually have a lot of faith in large scale projects
Depends how comfortable they make the train, too. Should be significantly better than coach on a plane.
With Texas’ hardon against regulations I forsee this having a massive derailment within two decades of it opening.
Hope that isn’t the case, because we do need better mass transit.
Eh maybe. Usually the calls for deregulation are sponsored by the industry giants. So due to there not being a strong passenger rail lobby yet, I can see the regulation being fine. Once someone is trying to get rich then the derailments will start.
I would be so down for this
Its the absolute most no brainer route for high speed rail in the US. Two metropolises with a combined population in the 10s of millions that are around 300 miles apart, minimum elevation changes on a straight route, largely empty space in between.
When it’s successful, you can hook it into fort worth pretty directly, and suddenly you have the core of a high speed rail network in a huge state that desperately needs it.
But I’m sure someone in the Texas government will say trains are “woke” and kill the project.
Time for Elon Musk to create a new vapour-ware like the boring tunnel to stop mass transplantation that will compete with his electric car empire
Maybe he’ll mass transplantate himself to Mars and take a few other sociopaths with him.
To everyone outside if Texas: they’ve been talking about this for decades.
You know who will always find sneaky ways to sabotage it? The airlines.
Damn man, that engineer had a shitty day and probably some shitty pants after that one.
A bullet train? in my Texas?! That sounds like some east coast liberal anti-car woke socialism!!
We dont want none of that hippy dippy liberty stealing foreigner mass transit in our glorious state!
/s for the oblivious
But it has the word bullet right in it. Sounds like you’re anti gun. Why do you hate freedom?
Man they’ve been trying to do this for years, but companies like Southwest lobby against it. Even Rick Perry was on board.
I would love to see it become a reality, but I’m skeptical.
Texas Monthly, 2015:
A Tale of Two Cities, a Bullet Train, and the Farmland in Between
Here’s a thought. Name your bullet train company like an oil company, call the bullet train the “oil pipeline”.
Each station can be named after gun or gun makers. Glock station, H&K transfer
Name them after famous 19th century American firearms inventors. Fuck all of them are now named after John Moses Browning.
Meanwhile, China has over 30,000 high-speed rail lines.
yeah but how many of them are bullet trains?
But do they have a massive fossil fuel industry to prop up?!
I think you mean 30 million high speed rail lines
As much as I hate to admit it, The People’s Republic of Texastan kind-of makes sense as a starting point given the geography. If we can extend this to a nationwide network, it would be a very, very big deal.
