How Local Politicians Destroyed Union Station (And Connecting Commuter Rail)

[samagon]

The value of bringing it to Union Station is having a downtown rail connection to another city, not just to bring people to games.

 

<devil's advocate>But there's an Amtrak facility in Houston already that is far underutilized. </devil's advocate>

 

While I don't agree entirely, it's hard to see fault in that logic, no matter how liberally the word 'facility' is used to describe the current Amtrak station. And while the Amtrak station is far removed from a hub of local transit, so was the baseball stadium in 1996. Aside from a light rail line that's going in on the same street, it's still as far removed from the downtown metro transit center as the Amtrak station is.

 

The Amtrak station has some things going for it though, there's already a connection into a heavy rail line, and it's a 'facility' that currently exists, no matter if the parking lot doesn't appear to have been repaved since it was first built, nor the fact that you feel like the station could have been used as a set in the movie "The Shining".

[IronTiger]

The Amtrak station is at least connected to an active freight line, but anything connecting the old Union Station was abandoned years before. To rebuild a railroad in 1996 would involve cutting through active streets and creating all sorts of dangerous crossings for pedestrians and vehicles.