Posted on 05/22/2010 6:13:44 AM PDT by Willie Green
State officials, Temple mayor seek $18M in federal grants for high-speed rail plan
State transportation officials are seeking about $18 million in federal grants to continue building a plan for high-speed rail in Texas.
Mayor Bill Jones III of Temple was in Austin on Friday meeting with Texas Department of Transportation rail staffers to make sure the so-called Texas T-Bone is in that plan.
The Texas T-Bone is the nickname given to a high-speed rail line that would connect the Dallas-Fort Worth area with Austin and San Antonio through Temple and with Houston on a leg routed southeast from Temple.
Read more like pork to me.
Right...pork ...using the sausage grinder of local politics
Which is why rail in Texas is such a joke.
Great - take a train from Temple to Houston - and then how do you get around once you get to Houston?
Why, you have to rent a car - something you wouldn't need to do if you just drove.
Well you could do that too if you really wanted to.
But driving around Houston is a PITA, especially if you're not familiar with the roads. Even those fancy GPS electronic maps that talk to you (like Garmin) don't seem to help much.
It's a lot easier to take a train and taxi, and let someone else fight the traffic congestion.
I've lived in Houston, Willie, and my parents lived there for 18 years. It is a huge city, and taking a taxi would be prohibitively expensive in most cases, and would limit your movement to a trip to your destination and a trip back.
Mass transit doesn't work in a city like Houston, Willie, too spread out to be cost-effective. It has a hard enough time working in a city like Philly, which is far more dense.
And that, like so many of your ilk that promote this stuff, is the problem - you don't let reality intrude on your grand schemes.
I grew up in Houston. About the only thing good the mass transit is for is going down town and back again. And that’s only if you live near the bus line. This city is too spread out for metro to be cost effective. They would not be able to build a facility big enough to hold all the buses that would be required.
Willie, you live in denial. Philly can get just as hot as Houston in the summer. It is all about the population density of Philly versus the lack of such in Houston.
They would not be able to build a facility big enough to hold all the buses that would be required.
Why build a new facility when the Astrodome is just sitting there empty?
Besides, buses just get stuck in traffic like everybody else.
We need more light-rail that can easily push other vehicles out of the way.
Texas has fast and cheap intercity transportion, its called Southwest Airlines.
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