I totally agree; but the UP has more lawyers on full time staff, biting at the bit to save "their" RR's $$$ than some LD trains carry pax. I watched their ways for many a year~ they honestly would drag six lawyers into court with them than in order to avoid paying a legitimate injury claim. Delaying Amtrak is like swatting a mosquito to them at the present time. Hopefully, the new regs will ring their bell.
Yes. The Golden State would be a fine name for the new train. All that I would suggest is that concurrently the Heartland Flyer be extended from Fort Worth to College Station - Houston connecting with the Golden State in Forth Worth in both directions. I know. I know crazy radical idea. But what the hey! Just needs one more set of a couple of Super Coaches and perhaps a CCC of which we have too many floating around anyway. It is the connectedness of the network that makes it more useful and hence brings more passengers to the system
I'd imagine you could fill 2 coaches with HOS and NOL bound passengers alone...plus some connections east of NOL (easier doing FTW-HOS-NOL-ORL than it is doing FTW-CHI-WAS-ORL) on top of that. Not sure about the track situation between DAL and HOS nowadays though, but on paper it makes sense.
Dallas-Houston needs high speed rail. I suspect it would be very much used.
Yes it does...I was surprised when I didn't see it on the proposed national HSR network map.
It is proposed in the proposed Texas T-Bone HSR project. The bottom of the T will split off from Temple and go to Houston.
Yeah, but it was not included in the proposed national map that came out. I still think the T-bone thing is stupid. They should directly connect DFW and Houston and T-bone off to San Antonio.
Can't really do that. The route between DFW & San Antonio is MUCH more densely populated with multiple population centers served, including the State Capital. Keep in mind that rail is extraordinarily expensive (which I still can't figure out) and its success as a passenger option must be in direct competition (or congetion aleviation) to other modes of transit, ie: I-35.
I believe (though no evidence) that the most used corridor would be DFW-Houston. I know so many people that make that trip weekly or more. It has to be direct or Southwest Airlines will continue to carry all that traffic and rail will never compete. No one is going all the way to Austin to get to DFW.
The line to Austin from Houston was abandoned in the 1960's. You can't get there from here. Houston to Dallas was served by two railroads, the Southern Pacific and the Burlington/RI joint line. The SP ran the Sunbeam in 4hrs25min with one stop over 264 miles. The Burlington ran the Sam Houston Zephyr in about 4hrs on a route of 249.6 miles. Both routes still exist and are in decent shape. All it takes to resume service is the will to do it by TXDOT and Amtrak. Amtrak ran an extension of the Eagle on the SP route for a few years, but they took 6 hours to make the trip and the train did not last. No one is going to utilize a train that takes more than 4 hours when SWA offers hourly service and gets you there in a hour. So a train detouring through Temple or San Antonio to get to DFW is useless.
Of course not. My plan is if Texas can pull off their intrastate HSR project, a standard guage, electrified, newest technology steel wheel passenger only ROW that is rated to 180 MPH or higher (ie: Shinkansen, TGV) could, indeed, get to there from here. My preliminary estimations would guess that on 180 MPH line, averaging 150 MPH, you could go from Houston to Austin to Dallas in 2:36. That's about an hour and a half longer than SWA, but when you figure the waiting room, etc., you're probably 1/2 hour delta. San Antonio to Dallas could be done in 1:50. It's bold, but doable in my opinion.
Okay, if that route can really be done in 2:36 (Houston-Dallas) and does not require a train change in Austin, then that amount of time is competitive.
The successor to the Texas Chief was Amtrak's Lone Star which became a victim of the Jimmy Carter masacre. At that time they threw Houston a bone by sending a piece of the Inter-American from Temple to Houston. That did not last long. After a gap of several years they tried sending a branch of the Eagle from Dallas to Houston using the old SP route and it took maybe 6 hours. That also did not last. The Texas Chief/Lone Star route through Fort Worth, OKC, KC to Chicago was a popular one, but it did not serve the Houston-Dallas market. None of the others ever caught on.
Again, though, the problem is that it can only serve Dallas and Houston. I'm not aware of any high speed city pairs that are the only stations on the route. There are no intermediate population centers that could benefit (except perhaps College Station). Routing it through Austin would now immediately pick up San Antonio, Austin, Temple, Waco, Dallas and Ft Worth with just one train change.
Running right up I45 hits Spring (The Woodlands), Conroe, Huntsville, Corsicana. Not huge places, but places that would benefit.
I don't exactly remember the sequence of events. There was a train called the Inter-American which ran Chicago - Laredo via SAS. It was cut back to SAS dropping the SAS - Laredo portion and at that time it was given the via Temple - Houston leg. This possibly happened at the same time that Lone Star was dropped. I will have to dig up the rest of my Amtrak timetable stash this evening when I get back home to figure out the exact sequence of events.
Your are right. Some of the larger states such as Texas, Florida, and New York need to step up to the plate and fund some Amtrak passenger services like California, Illinois, North Carolina and other states have done instead of building more highways.Longview is just about as close to Houston as Austin is...
A lot of Houston's problems are Houston's alone. They've chosen not to support rail and they've chosen to put in a half-butt light rail disaster and they've chosen to spend their money on three huge loops around the city.
They're sleeping in the bed they made.
