Amtrak and TxDOT to study new service from SHV to DFW

[henryj]

About College Station, yes, I would also love to see that being included in the scheme of things if and when Texas gets serious about inter-city corridor rail, but the location of that town is such that I have yet not been able to figure out what would be the best way to connect it- on Dallas-San Antonio leg, San Antonio-Houston leg or Houston-Dallas leg.. one of the sections will need to take a significant detour from the shortest path, the question is, which one would make most sense, or rather, least negative impact on the popularity of the train among city to city travelers.

Running a Dallas-Houston route through College station is one of the options in the $15 million TX DOT preliminary engineering and NEPA documentation project. The application and supporting documents for the project can be found here. Applied for $18 million, got $15 million. The project will look at 3 alternative routes: UPRR, BNSF, and a green field route following I-45. More links to the Texas DOT HSIPR applications are here.

Interesting document, looks like TEXDOT has at least found someone that knows where the existing rail routes are. Looking at their map they seem to be choosing the old MP route between Bryan and Hearne which is a roundabout way to go vs the old SP route which is directly up highway 6. The MP route encompasses a sharp left turn right in the middle of downtown Bryan followed by a stretch down the middle of a residential street before crossing over Hwy 21 to go north. They follow this to the Brazos river and almost to Valley Jct and then switch over to the DALSA to get into Hearne. That alignment will add time and miles to the route that is already the longest route. If they were really serious about starting up this service, by far the quickest and cheapest way is to use the BNSF route. This study won't be completed until 2014. The biggest boondoggle is the proposed route up I45 which would require billions and billions of dollars to build a whole new ROW and probably rebuild much of I45 plus all new park and ride style stations since I45 bypasses every population center between Houston and Dallas. But, hey, the politicians might like that because they can award more contracts and get more kick backs. I look at this study as a way to avoid doing anything for years other than waste taxpayers dollars.

 

[fairviewroad]

Bossier's right on the border between Texas and Louisiana (I drove through there one evening last year), before you get to SHV.

No, Bossier City is Shreveports twin city on the east bank of the Red river. It looks like they want to take the train over the river and have the terminal station there as well as one in Shreveport itself.

Bossier City is also home to several of the Shreveport area casinos. Also, Bossier City is the locale of the immense Barksdale AFB, with its scads (thousands? not sure) of young adults. Even those who live off-base seemed to live on the Bossier City side of the river(at least when I lived in the Shreveport area in the 90's). Many of them seemed to get the weekend off and I'm sure would relish an easy, comfortable way to get to Dallas (i.e. anywhere other than Shreveport) for the weekend.