51 replies to this topic

[john h]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

[Texan Eagle]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?


Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

[Gratt]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?


Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

Oh TxDOT loves doing studies which just get us hopeful and then noting comes of it.

Did you see the one for AUS-HOU?

http://ftp.dot.state...uston_final.pdf

I need to make a posting on this if no one around here has seen it.

[john h]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?


Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

on question 2 there is already Dallas-Ft Worth -Austin- San Antonio or did I misread what you are saying

[Texan Eagle]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?


Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

on question 2 there is already Dallas-Ft Worth -Austin- San Antonio or did I misread what you are saying

Corridor service please? A once-a-day train ambling along at a leisurely pace taking 10 hours to go from Dallas to San Antonio hardly helps as an effective mode of transportation.

[john h]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?


Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

on question 2 there is already Dallas-Ft Worth -Austin- San Antonio or did I misread what you are saying

Corridor service please? A once-a-day train ambling along at a leisurely pace taking 10 hours to go from Dallas to San Antonio hardly helps as an effective mode of transportation.

True once I did not get to San Antonio until about 1am

[boxcar817]

I agree with gratt , the only reason they are looking at Shreveport is because they have already STUDIED the Dallas - Houston corridor train to death! We will never have HSR to Houston nor Shreveport IMO

[Devil's Advocate]

I heard that TXDOT is on some sort of accelerated Sunset Review schedule and that they may be dissolved at some point in the future. Not sure what that would mean or what would replace them, but in a state where our own governor can't wait to make another threat to secede from the union I suppose anything is possible.

[afigg]

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?

Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

Amtrak has put out a 3 page press release on the study which the obvious source of much of the info in the newspaper article. Study is for a 79 mph corridor service, by the way.

1. UP is the rail capacity modeling, so they are part of the study team. of course, their capacity modeling may come back and say they need $250 million for track upgrades for the route.
2. Who says this corridor is higher priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-San Antonio?
3. TX DOT got 2 grants for the study, one federal grant is stated at $265K, no specifics on the source of the second grant. But this is a $745K study which is small potatoes. Not a lot of money being spent here. Can't add new services without going through the first step of an initial feasibility and cost study. Most initial studies don't go anywhere, but some do.

Looking at the map, the route does have the advantage of being an existing Amtrak route with an extension to Shreveport. If the study concludes that a corridor service can be started from FTW/Dallas to Shreveport at low cost with decent trip times, maybe it becomes the low hanging fruit for starting additional corridor train services in TX in the nearer term than Dallas to San Antonio. If TX is willing to fund the Heartland Flyer in cooperation with OK, TX could team up with Louisiana on a FTW to Shreveport service. Odds are against this study leading to anything in the near future though. Especially with Senator Hutchison leaving at the end of the term, if her office was key in getting the study funding.

[Anderson]

I've gathered that while Texas isn't chomping at the bit to get services started up, it's not like UP is super-duper cooperative as a rule.

[TexRail]

Here is the link for the star-telegram. Looks like they might add another stop to the Eagle.

http://blogs.star-te...exas-suppo.html

[TexRail]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?


Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

The answer to question 2 is simple. People will actually ride it. Going to the casino is a leisure activity. People like our slower LD trains when taking leisure trips. People don't like our slower LD trains when they need to get somewhere for business or when time is even a minor factor. The amount of people that go to the LA casinos from DFW is huge. Another factor is that the people like to drink while on these casino excursions. This way, they can drink legally enroute and the trip home would be safer for everyone. Anyone that has been to a casino knows how they like to get people liquored up. Another plus is that it will keep people from going to WinStar Casino, north of the border. WinStar is not a real casino. Few table games and they make you pay an ante for blackjack. Honestly, who does that? But that is another story.

I wouldn't be surprised if this train was regularly sold out if it exists one day. But this train has been talked about for decades so I will believe it when I see it. On a side note, where would they get the equipment? From my understanding, there isn't a lot of extra passenger cars laying around.

[Anderson]

It's possible that they might be able to get an equipment grant out of either an earmark or a future funding pool (and/or the cars might be thrown onto the existing bilevel order, pushing it from the current 130 up to 135 or 140). It's also possible that they might be able to scrape together cars from that order indirectly by shifting Horizons or existing bilevels around. Mind you, I'm not opposed to such an idea...honestly, letting a state have a particularly "light ride" on the cost of their first equipment sets (i.e. either giving them a direct subsidy for the cars or letting them use cars out of the existing fleet and buying Amtrak replacements) is probably the best way to get them to go in for projects. If I'm Joe Legislator, I don't want to drop $50 or $100 million on a project that might go unused (and we've seen plenty of those over the years).

[Texan Eagle]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?


Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

The answer to question 2 is simple. People will actually ride it. Going to the casino is a leisure activity. People like our slower LD trains when taking leisure trips. People don't like our slower LD trains when they need to get somewhere for business or when time is even a minor factor. The amount of people that go to the LA casinos from DFW is huge. Another factor is that the people like to drink while on these casino excursions. This way, they can drink legally enroute and the trip home would be safer for everyone. Anyone that has been to a casino knows how they like to get people liquored up. Another plus is that it will keep people from going to WinStar Casino, north of the border. WinStar is not a real casino. Few table games and they make you pay an ante for blackjack. Honestly, who does that? But that is another story.

I wouldn't be surprised if this train was regularly sold out if it exists one day. But this train has been talked about for decades so I will believe it when I see it. On a side note, where would they get the equipment? From my understanding, there isn't a lot of extra passenger cars laying around.

Ok, I have lived in Texas for only eight months now and didn't know about this going-to-LA-for-casino tradition (why didn't anyone tell me about it? ) So if this proposed train is mainly going to cater to leisure traffic, as opposed to a real corridor-style business traffic, it might be worth it to persuade the casinos in Shreveport to chip in for the train service, something like how the Atlantic City Express Service (ACES train) runs from New York to Atlantic City. This way you dont have to worry about how will Amtrak provide equipment. The casino guys can arrange for whatever kind of swanky crazy type of trainset as they desire!

[eagle628]

So if this proposed train is mainly going to cater to leisure traffic, as opposed to a real corridor-style business traffic, it might be worth it to persuade the casinos in Shreveport to chip in for the train service, something like how the Atlantic City Express Service (ACES train) runs from New York to Atlantic City.

Right, 'cause that's been such a resounding success...

[TexRail]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?


Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

The answer to question 2 is simple. People will actually ride it. Going to the casino is a leisure activity. People like our slower LD trains when taking leisure trips. People don't like our slower LD trains when they need to get somewhere for business or when time is even a minor factor. The amount of people that go to the LA casinos from DFW is huge. Another factor is that the people like to drink while on these casino excursions. This way, they can drink legally enroute and the trip home would be safer for everyone. Anyone that has been to a casino knows how they like to get people liquored up. Another plus is that it will keep people from going to WinStar Casino, north of the border. WinStar is not a real casino. Few table games and they make you pay an ante for blackjack. Honestly, who does that? But that is another story.

I wouldn't be surprised if this train was regularly sold out if it exists one day. But this train has been talked about for decades so I will believe it when I see it. On a side note, where would they get the equipment? From my understanding, there isn't a lot of extra passenger cars laying around.

Ok, I have lived in Texas for only eight months now and didn't know about this going-to-LA-for-casino tradition (why didn't anyone tell me about it? ) So if this proposed train is mainly going to cater to leisure traffic, as opposed to a real corridor-style business traffic, it might be worth it to persuade the casinos in Shreveport to chip in for the train service, something like how the Atlantic City Express Service (ACES train) runs from New York to Atlantic City. This way you dont have to worry about how will Amtrak provide equipment. The casino guys can arrange for whatever kind of swanky crazy type of trainset as they desire!

If the casinos want to pitch in, I'm all for it but I won't hold my breath. There have been some big casinos go out of business in Bossier so not even casinos are making it rain, particularly in this economy. A casino train might scare away some regular travelers anyway. Some people might even think the casino crowd is too rowdy to be around for 5 hrs. I don't want to alienate those pax on trips to grandma's house. If the line opens, advertise it as what it is; a train from DFW to Bossier. Let the chips fall where they may. The public will create their own possibilities and no doubt the casinos will do some aggressive advertising. If the train is high capacity then no need for the casinos to even spend money advertising the train. Only so many pax can ride per day.

[Devil's Advocate]

Some Texans gamble in Louisiana or Oklahoma, but most go to Nevada. At least that's how things are down here in South Texas. We also go to Florida for the mouse and Colorado for the mountains. Shreveport? I just don't see it as a huge destination for most Texans, but maybe things are different in DFW?

[TexRail]

Some Texans gamble in Louisiana or Oklahoma, but most go to Nevada. At least that's how things are down here in South Texas. We also go to Florida for the mouse and Colorado for the mountains. Shreveport? I just don't see it as a huge destination for most Texans, but maybe things are different in DFW?

It's a 3 hour drive from DFW to Bossier. It is very popular to go for the day or a quick overnight trip. I've even taken Amtrak and their bus connection. There are also some bus services that cater to gamblers. As much as I like riding the train, the bus is just too much of a pain. If I were to go back, it would be in a car unless this line opens. I definitely wouldn't drive much more than 3 hrs to get there which is probably why it's just a DFW/east TX thing. But the casinos are pretty decent and they are full service casinos unlike the closer casinos in OK that I've seen.

[trainviews]

Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

In short: because of local political support.I don't know if the priority is higher, but it is only on the map because the communities along the corridor has mounted a decades long lobbying effort, and that's what's paying off. It seems to me that railwise there is some difference between north and south in Texas. As far as i understand it was also the communities in North Texas that mounted the effort that got Hutchison to jump in save the Eagle, and somehow they also got the state to chip in for its share of the Heartland flyer...

[Anderson]

This seems like a lot of money to spend in a study, however maybe it would be a casino route for some in DFW

Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFWShreveport Times
MARSHALL, Texas –Amtrak and the Texas Department of Transportation agreed on the scope of a $745000 feasibility study today for new Amtrak service between Shreveport-Bossier City following the Interstate 20 corridor to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Question 1: Will UP ever agree to host passenger trains on its line?


Question 2: How is this corridor-service higher in priority than Dallas-Houston or Dallas-Austin-San Antonio corridor service?

Question 3: How does state of Texas come up with so much money to do all these feasibility studies only to eventually shelve the plans?

The answer to question 2 is simple. People will actually ride it. Going to the casino is a leisure activity. People like our slower LD trains when taking leisure trips. People don't like our slower LD trains when they need to get somewhere for business or when time is even a minor factor. The amount of people that go to the LA casinos from DFW is huge. Another factor is that the people like to drink while on these casino excursions. This way, they can drink legally enroute and the trip home would be safer for everyone. Anyone that has been to a casino knows how they like to get people liquored up. Another plus is that it will keep people from going to WinStar Casino, north of the border. WinStar is not a real casino. Few table games and they make you pay an ante for blackjack. Honestly, who does that? But that is another story.

I wouldn't be surprised if this train was regularly sold out if it exists one day. But this train has been talked about for decades so I will believe it when I see it. On a side note, where would they get the equipment? From my understanding, there isn't a lot of extra passenger cars laying around.

Ok, I have lived in Texas for only eight months now and didn't know about this going-to-LA-for-casino tradition (why didn't anyone tell me about it? ) So if this proposed train is mainly going to cater to leisure traffic, as opposed to a real corridor-style business traffic, it might be worth it to persuade the casinos in Shreveport to chip in for the train service, something like how the Atlantic City Express Service (ACES train) runs from New York to Atlantic City. This way you dont have to worry about how will Amtrak provide equipment. The casino guys can arrange for whatever kind of swanky crazy type of trainset as they desire!

If the casinos want to pitch in, I'm all for it but I won't hold my breath. There have been some big casinos go out of business in Bossier so not even casinos are making it rain, particularly in this economy. A casino train might scare away some regular travelers anyway. Some people might even think the casino crowd is too rowdy to be around for 5 hrs. I don't want to alienate those pax on trips to grandma's house. If the line opens, advertise it as what it is; a train from DFW to Bossier. Let the chips fall where they may. The public will create their own possibilities and no doubt the casinos will do some aggressive advertising. If the train is high capacity then no need for the casinos to even spend money advertising the train. Only so many pax can ride per day.

To be fair, I think the answer there would be to split the train's numbering and have a "non-casino" car of some sort on one end of the train if that were an issue. I would also point out that in the case of the MSP-Duluth train, a casino at an intermediate stop was considered a major plus to the operation.

By the way, where would this train run vs. the planned alignment for the Crescent Star? I ask because if this train were successful, using a batch of cut-off cars at Bossier/Shreveport and using the casino run as a funding mechanism to connect the Crescent to Dallas would be viable. If you needed to, with this you could even run the through cars as Viewliners, use bilevels for the casino cut-offs, and take a page from Santa Fe and keep the two crowds apart and on separately-numbered trains.

When you get down to it, as far as I am concerned the presence of the casino(s) and their attached ridership market(s) simply serves as a mechanism with which to fund a passenger rail service and potentially create a market for other services. It is nothing more and nothing less; it could be an amusement park, a popular beach, or an airport and it would mean the exact same thing to me.