Houston High-Speed Rail

[TheNiche]

forget high speed rail. why not use this money to improve the infrastructure of subway/light rail lines in the metro areas of DFW/HOU. That would be more beneficial for everyone instead of putting rails between the cities.

If the trains are sufficiently fast, the routes perhaps more efficient than the proposed T-Bone, and the variable costs per mile sufficiently low, we could witness an inter-city commuter pattern develop. That would help all of Texas, as it would effect economies of urban agglomeration.

I agree that an $18 billion price tag is high, but perhaps for such a benefit it is not even high enough. What scares me is that we might spend all this money for a system that is not a significant improvement over air service.

[TheNiche]

The last point can't be stressed enough... but to be most effective, we need the network to be extended down to Galveston.

As these HSRs are currently planned, they would have stations at each of the major airports. So in this fashion, it may actually help to boost business for the major airlines, b/c it gives a quicker route for people to get to the airport.

I actually think that the hurricane evacuation rationale is probably the least credible. The Ike evacuation wasn't nearly as bad as Rita and the ones without personal transportation who got bussed to San Antonio didn't really need to be that far from home. To the extent that there was congestion, it wasn't so crippling as to justify an expenditure of say, several hundred dollars (approx. $2B) for every man, woman, and child in the Houston metropolitan area (the vast majority of whom don't live in an evacuation zone).

Realistically, hurricane evacuations are probably best dealt with by funding the construction of purpose-built hurricane shelters closer to home...for instance behind the levees of Texas City. Then just use city busses and school busses to provide transportation. Problem solved, all without multi-billion-dollar price tags and without threatening to interrupt the operations of all of the major nearby cities at once by overwhelming their facilities with our indigent refugees.

The estimate today is $18 billion. The estimate next year will be $20 billion.

The longer this sort of thing is put off, the more it will cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_vs._nominal_in_economics

[TheNiche]

Why does it have to be high speed? Why not just regular 80 mph rail? Does a few minutes each way really affect us that much?

YES! Otherwise, I'll just do 80 mph in my car, listening to my own music at high volume without a whining brat sitting in the seat behind me, and then ultimately have something to drive around in when I get where I'm going.

The train will compete with other forms of transportation for riders, and if it isn't appealing enough to enough people, clearly it won't be worth the expenditure. That's where CALMSP is correct, and we'd be better off putting the money to a different use.

[editor]

What scares me is that we might spend all this money for a system that is not a significant improvement over air service.

What scares me is that we might spend all this money on fatter freeways that will fill up once again in a few years and we're right back where we started. Again.

[TheNiche]

Aren't you a business major? You should know that "we" are not given $18 Billion to build high speed rail. If high speed rail is built, it would either be a private company, or possibly a public-private group of some kind. I don't even know who "we" is. To fix Houston infrastructure, "we" would be the City of Houston. To build rail in Houston, "we" would be either METRO, Harris County, or possibly the HCTRA. To build rail to Galveston, "we" might need to be a combination of Harris and Galveston Counties, or again, perhaps HCTRA's charter would allow them to be "we". For UH and St. Thomas, "we" is really getting weird, as one is a public university, while the othe is a private Catholic school.

Red, it doesn't matter who "we" is. Society has a fixed amount of scarce resources to allocate to various undertakings. If a high speed rail system is built, that means that those resources are not utilized elsewhere in the economy.

Stombiz's point is valid even though I don't necessarily agree with it (at this point in time). Infrastructure should never be built just because it can be, or because it'd be good for a few people, or because it'd "create or save jobs", or because it is in line with somebody's idea of how cool Europe is, or whatever. It should be built because it generates a sufficient amount of utility to justify the resources allocated to it. Those resources could instead be allocated to any number of public or private projects, the precise nature of which are inconsequential to this argument except that they could conceivably generate more bang for the buck

What scares me is that we might spend all this money on fatter freeways that will fill up once again in a few years and we're right back where we started. Again.

OK, that's tangential.

[Subdude]

It should be built because it generates a sufficient amount of utility to justify the resources allocated to it.

Ah, but the devil is in the details as they say. You make it sound as if the resultant utils can be precisely measured. Quite obviously the determination of utility, and the amount sufficient to justify the resources, are subjective calls. Bear in mind that infrastructure (and I would include airlines) is rarely profitable on its own, so funding decisions are inevitably going to take into account many intangible and political factors. Rail travel might not now be desirable to many people, but there are certainly arguments to be made that transportation funding needs to be tilted more in favor of alternatives like rail.

Infrastructure should never be built just because it can be, or because it'd be good for a few people, or because it'd "create or save jobs"

Point taken, but there are a heck of a lot of infrastructure projects coming down the pike that are intended precisely to create or save jobs.

[TheNiche]

Ah, but the devil is in the details as they say. You make it sound as if the resultant utils can be precisely measured. Quite obviously the determination of utility, and the amount sufficient to justify the resources, are subjective calls. Bear in mind that infrastructure (and I would include airlines) is rarely profitable on its own, so funding decisions are inevitably going to take into account many intangible and political factors.

No good scientist would ever make the claim that any measurement is completely 100% (whole number) precise. The yard stick is never adequate to the task. That doesn't mean that scientists stop measuring things, just that they must be cognizant of the margin for error and be able to explain extraordinary circumstances as they come up.

I have recommended the following book numerous times on HAIF because it provides a good analytical framework for project evaluation as viewed from the perspective of the public. It includes discussion as to how to how to make apples-to-apples comparisons of benefit and cost, even when benefits are not expressed in terms of currency.

http://www.amazon.com/Cost-Benefit-Analysi...n/dp/0275856909

Rail travel might not now be desirable to many people, but there are certainly arguments to be made that transportation funding needs to be tilted more in favor of alternatives like rail.

I agree. But as I pointed out earlier, not every rail proposal is created equal.

There are rail proposals which will cost relatively little and which can be gotten up and running very quickly, but that produce pitifully little benefit. That's what I'm afraid could be the outcome on the Texas T-Bone.

...and then there's overkill such as developing underground vacuum-sealed tunnels to accomodate maglev trains which--devoid of the drag caused by air--could easily outrun any commercial passenger aircraft in existence. If implemented on a regional basis at first (or perhaps a cross-continental basis later on), it would free up a lot of airport capacity and reduce pressures on the air traffic control system, reduce air and noise pollution in metropolitan areas caused by all that airport traffic, create a whole new class of urban agglomeration economies, and of course save people a tremendous amount of time and induce untold numbers of new inter-city trips.

^This was an idea I had had a couple years back, but the more I evaluated it, the more I came to the conclusion that the project was marginal. It's still better than an 80-mph fast train that gets run along an indirect route between major destinations and that has to stop in every third-tier city along the way.

Point taken, but there are a heck of a lot of infrastructure projects coming down the pike that are intended precisely to create or save jobs.

I know. I threw that out there because I anticipated a reply like yours. That's also why in the sentence following the one that you responded to, I laid out the concept of opportunity cost and made the disclaimer that the precise nature of the projects that should be undertaken is inconsequential to my argument except insofar as they evaluate project proposals against one another to determine where they can get the most bang for the buck.

I don't doubt for a second that we could find places spend a trillion dollars on economically viable infrastructure projects (that is, projects that produce greater social returns than the null outcome--which is to simply not make the resource allocation). And I don't even doubt that we could evaluate ten or twenty times that number in terms of viable project proposals against one another so as to ensure that the funds that are being allocated are allocated responsibly to projects with the highest benefit:cost ratio.

[zaphod]

I was thinking as an alternative to the Texas T-Bone would be a line up the 6 corridor through College Station and meeting the 35 corridor at Waco. This would make the Houston-DFW trip shorter.

A third component, a line from Houston to Austin/San Antonio, might branch off at Brenham or Magnolia(depends on how west the 6 line sits) and go to San Marcos, then trains going to either city would branch off.

[N Judah]

I bet the small towns love this project. Otherwise I can't really think of a reason to do it.

[wernicke]

I bet the small towns love this project. Otherwise I can't really think of a reason to do it.

Strengthen intra-state commerce w alternative to air travel... capitalism.

[TheNiche]

Strengthen intra-state commerce w alternative to air travel... capitalism.

Capitalism is really more of a descriptor of an economic system than a reason to do something in and of itself.

[totheskies]

I actually think that the hurricane evacuation rationale is probably the least credible. The Ike evacuation wasn't nearly as bad as Rita and the ones without personal transportation who got bussed to San Antonio didn't really need to be that far from home. To the extent that there was congestion, it wasn't so crippling as to justify an expenditure of say, several hundred dollars (approx. $2B) for every man, woman, and child in the Houston metropolitan area (the vast majority of whom don't live in an evacuation zone).

Realistically, hurricane evacuations are probably best dealt with by funding the construction of purpose-built hurricane shelters closer to home...for instance behind the levees of Texas City. Then just use city busses and school busses to provide transportation. Problem solved, all without multi-billion-dollar price tags and without threatening to interrupt the operations of all of the major nearby cities at once by overwhelming their facilities with our indigent refugees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_vs._nominal_in_economics

Right, but you're comparing two entirely different scales of evacuation... Rita was almost 3 million people leaving at virtually the same time. Ike was less than one million leaving in well-orchestrated intervals. No comparison in my mind.

With evacuations, we have to plan for worst case scenarios. In that respect, a thorough rail network would be able to move a lot of people... especially if you're dealing with the smaller areas like Galveston.

[TheNiche]

Right, but you're comparing two entirely different scales of evacuation... Rita was almost 3 million people leaving at virtually the same time. Ike was less than one million leaving in well-orchestrated intervals. No comparison in my mind.

With evacuations, we have to plan for worst case scenarios. In that respect, a thorough rail network would be able to move a lot of people... especially if you're dealing with the smaller areas like Galveston.

I concur that we should plan for the worst. However I disagree that an extraordinarily expensive train serving with very limited access points (such as requires operable mass transit to reach) serving areas that you yourself describe as small should be justified on the basis of an evacuation because I have a far better approach in mind (which you did nothing to address one way or the other).

The fact is that most people that have cars in Galveston or other low-lying areas are going to evacuate themselves and their cars. They'll need highways to do it. For the relatively small population that does not have a car, whole fleets of buses will need to be gotten off the island anyway and if they can ferry passengers at the same time, then that's an evacuation that can occur at zero cost up to the point at which the fleets are removed from the island and there have to be return trips. ...and then those trips occur at very low cost. There may be some congestion, but it isn't something that we can't handle. It's not like evacuees were going to go to work anyway, or to some other event that they have to be on time for, and even for Rita all the roads were clear before the storm hit.

Frankly, though, even though most people are still going to utilize a highway for an evacuation, I don't even see evacuation as a justification to built more highways. Evacuations are a politically convenient excuse to spend money on huge projects, but I just can't point to very much of anything that is an evacuation bottleneck that doesn't already need to be expanded to handle day-to-day needs anyway. The rest can be easily worked around at very low cost...for instance by putting a traffic cop at stop signs in small towns to keep traffic moving during an evacuation (they did this for Ike, having learned from Rita).

[totheskies]

I concur that we should plan for the worst. However I disagree that an extraordinarily expensive train serving with very limited access points (such as requires operable mass transit to reach) serving areas that you yourself describe as small should be justified on the basis of an evacuation because I have a far better approach in mind (which you did nothing to address one way or the other).

The fact is that most people that have cars in Galveston or other low-lying areas are going to evacuate themselves and their cars. They'll need highways to do it. For the relatively small population that does not have a car, whole fleets of buses will need to be gotten off the island anyway and if they can ferry passengers at the same time, then that's an evacuation that can occur at zero cost up to the point at which the fleets are removed from the island and there have to be return trips. ...and then those trips occur at very low cost. There may be some congestion, but it isn't something that we can't handle. It's not like evacuees were going to go to work anyway, or to some other event that they have to be on time for, and even for Rita all the roads were clear before the storm hit.

Frankly, though, even though most people are still going to utilize a highway for an evacuation, I don't even see evacuation as a justification to built more highways. Evacuations are a politically convenient excuse to spend money on huge projects, but I just can't point to very much of anything that is an evacuation bottleneck that doesn't already need to be expanded to handle day-to-day needs anyway. The rest can be easily worked around at very low cost...for instance by putting a traffic cop at stop signs in small towns to keep traffic moving during an evacuation (they did this for Ike, having learned from Rita).

No, I didn't b/c I don't want to spend all day arguing with you while at work.

There's nothing wrong with having local shelters either, but you act like we have to settle for one plan instead of a comprehensive group of things to assist the Houston area in natural disasters... that means repaired and well-maintenanced roads, local area shelters and better rail network. I'm also of the belief that we shouldn't live our whole lives waiting for a natural disaster, but we'd be ignorant to not do all we can to be ready for it. Especially with the current effects of climate change. Hurricanes are becoming a larger and more frequent phenomenon for Houston, which means evacuations are now a part of our lives.

[TheNiche]

No, I didn't b/c I don't want to spend all day arguing with you while at work.

There's nothing wrong with having local shelters either, but you act like we have to settle for one plan instead of a comprehensive group of things to assist the Houston area in natural disasters... that means repaired and well-maintenanced roads, local area shelters and better rail network. I'm also of the belief that we shouldn't live our whole lives waiting for a natural disaster, but we'd be ignorant to not do all we can to be ready for it.

Does this "comprehensive group of things" also mean a dozen fleets of helicopters stationed at dozens of inland helipads (and they have to be in different places in case several of those sites get struck directly by meteors as the storm bears down) as yet another layer of redundant evacuation infrastructure?

It's great to have options, but some options aren't necessary or worth the cost. It is possible to spend too much on public safety, especially when the end result is that evacuees are only able to get to their destination a few hours sooner. What's the benefit in that, that they get piss drunk sooner? Sorry. Not good enough.

On a broader theme, I am not of the belief that we ought to spend our whole lives and a significant fraction of our resources preparing for the worst case scenario. Sometimes survivalist extremes can be counter to actually living life.

[burlesona]

But $18,000,000,000? That's huge. Aren't there ridership projections? I would doubt that the DFW to San Antonio would be cost-justified. The phrase "it would be nice" comes up a lot about this train, but is it really worth it? I could think of a lot more "it would be nice"s which cost a lot less but would still benefit Texas.

We spent almost $3 Billion to widen ~20 miles of Katy Freeway. Why does $18 billion to build ~400 miles of high speed rail seem too high?

[lockmat]

Official Strategic Plan with pdfs, including high resolution pics of the map

http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/31

Fed to invest $13 billion in nationwide high-speed rail project

http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/sto...13/daily39.html

http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2009/dot5109.htm

[roadrunner]

Fed to invest $13 billion in nationwide high-speed rail project

http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/sto...13/daily39.html

http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2009/dot5109.htm

Unless the grey parts are going to become high speed rail, I don't see this being that effective.

[lockmat]

Unless the grey parts are going to become high speed rail, I don't see this being that effective.

See the extra link i put in after your comment posted. It has another link to a higher resolution of the map showing what the grey routes are.

[crunchtastic]

Unless the grey parts are going to become high speed rail, I don't see this being that effective.

aren't the gray lines the existing Amtrak passenger routes?

[lockmat]

I'm wondering why there are two routes going up to NoCal.

[Highway6]

aren't the gray lines the existing Amtrak passenger routes?

Yah.. and the new Highspeecd Routes just follow the existing Amtrak service.

This isn't an improvement. The only options Houston has currently is SA or NO... nothing is going to change.

[TheNiche]

WHY IS HOUSTON ONLY GETTING A CONNECTION TO NEW ORLEANS!?

This is bovine fecal matter!

[Highway6]

Looks like Texas is on their own to connect Texas..

Whether is the Texas T, or Triangle, or whatever.. guess its on the state to mind the gap and connect those two highspeed corridors.

Here's hoping they dont just stick with the gray line.

[roadrunner]

No Houston-Dallas connection is pretty weak

[editor]

aren't the gray lines the existing Amtrak passenger routes?

Some of them are. Some of the red ones are Amtrak routes, too. I assume they'll be easier to upgrade than build new.

[editor]

I'm wondering why there are two routes going up to NoCal.

The coastal route is more "express" than the inland route. It more directly connects Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The inland route also connects a bunch of cities like Bakersfield, Sacramento, Fresno, Stockton and the like.

California is already moving ahead with both of these routes. I think the federal involvement will be simply throwing money at it to speed it along.

[TheNiche]

No Houston-Dallas connection is pretty weak

Florida also got ripped off with no high-speed Orlando-Jacksonville connection, but Houston is undoubtedly the least well-served major city on this map.

And why does Texarkana get a stop and not Beaumont?

[crunchtastic]

WHY IS HOUSTON ONLY GETTING A CONNECTION TO NEW ORLEANS!?

This is bovine fecal matter!

Exactly.

Are we being punished? Is this a joke?

[Jax]

WHY IS HOUSTON ONLY GETTING A CONNECTION TO NEW ORLEANS!?

Yeah that kind of confuses me too. As much as I'd love to visit New Orleans, I'd rather see a connection to the rest of the major cities in Texas. Hopefully these are just preliminary plans...

EDIT: So there is a connection from Houston to SA but it's not high speed. That's still not very good. I would hope they would at least consider making the Houston-San Antonio part high speed, that way the largest city in the state would at least be connected to the rest of the Texas high speed corridor.