Daily Willie Green Choo-Choo thread.
Promoting 19th Century technology for the 21st Century.
Posted on 08/20/2010 7:42:46 AM PDT by Willie Green
TYLER — Bill Glavin joined Texas Department of Transportation eight months ago as its appointed Rail Division director.
And as Longview rail advocate Natalie Rabicoff said when Glavin was introduced in Tyler on Thursday, "He's been moving the whole time."
Since his December 2009 appointment, the rail industry consultant has brought much-wanted energy to a state agency racing to complete a finished state rail plan.
Glavin and other TxDOT officials from Austin visited East Texas on Thursday, stopping in Tyler for the 10th and final public briefing on the plan. Officials hope to present a finished copy of the 250-page document to the Texas Transportation Commission and state lawmakers before they convene in January.
More than 50 East Texans and public infrastructure officials or private sector consultants from Dallas and Arkansas attended the briefing at the TxDOT-Tyler District office.
Among the attendees were Longview city engineers Kirk Hauser and Brent Brevard, Rusk County Rail District Chairman John Cloutier, Gregg County Rail District Chairman Griff Hubbard, Harrison County Judge Richard Anderson, Longview Metropolitan Planning Organization Director Karen Owen, Rabicoff and at least a half-dozen other members of the Texas Eagle Marketing and Performance Organization and the East Texas Corridor Council.
Owen will join Corridor Council Chairman Tim Vaughn in serving on a statewide panel of railroad industry administrators, rail advocates and districts to review the rail plan, Glavin said.
The process is part of a national initiative for a long-range rail plan across the U.S. The national plan will address capacity building, safety and livability.
Jennifer Moczygemba, TxDOT multimodal section director, said Texas must find ways to address what could become future congestion and bottlenecks, on highways and rail lines. The U.S. has designated several high-speed rail corridors for passenger service, including South Central line crossing East Texas from Little Rock to Dallas.
"It's very important that we do no harm to the freight rail system if we want to add passenger rail to it," she said.
Tyler Economic Development Director Tom Mullins said rail expansion is something weighing on his thoughts, statewide and locally. In Tyler, the Goodyear Tire plant that shut down several years ago has caught interest from two manufacturing prospects interested in bringing hundreds of jobs. However, an adjacent rail line to the plant was disconnected by owners about 15 years ago, keeping the prospects away from the dormant facility, Mullins said.
He believes a federal funding pool could allow communities such as Tyler to invest in building new rail spurs and reacquiring old lines. He also believes the state's population growth — estimated at 1,000 new Texans a day — will force state and federal leaders to address growing congestion in transportation infrastructure.
"We've got to do something," Mullins said. "You can't just put them all on the existing highway system."
I know several of the people in this article and they fall into two categories- pie in the sky utopian libs and people who own property around the old depot in Longview.
Most of the town is scratching our head. We are fixing up the old depot as a historical site but the calls some are making for ‘high speed’ rail connections to Dallas or Shreveport is just silly. We already have rail to those cities and it is almost as fast to just drive there.
If it’s high speed rail, it won’t be stopping in every little town along the way. The people traveling between Houston to Dallas will just continue flying Southwest, if the “high speed” trains make stops at all the towns with a traffic light in between.
Officials disconnected from The People who don’t see the need for gov’t “investment” in systems The People don’t want.
Its completely silly. From Longview, it takes 1.5 hours to drive to Dallas if the traffic is bad and there is construction. I just looked up Amtrak’s schedule and going by rail takes 3 hours not counting the wait at the station. Then, when you get to Dallas, unless you want to do something around the station, you’ll need a taxi or rental car.
Willie Green posts all these stupid pro-rail articles. Fast rail for people is a waste.
A side note, something interesting is that the former district attorney, a friend of mine, calls Texas Eagle the crime express because it is one of the main ways of moving money south and drugs north.
These officials need to be informed of their imminent removal.
Monday nights on RFD-TV between 6:00 and 7:00 ET must be like porn to you Willie... :)
http://rfdtvweb.ironinnovation.com/schedule.asp
This is one of those “this will be great because someone else will pay for it” situations.
I have always thought that fast rail track should be built in the med. of the intersates, already own the property, put it sown and let er go.
Close the northern and western border!
Its completely silly. From Longview, it takes 1.5 hours to drive to Dallas if the traffic is bad and there is construction
Mapquest says that it takes 2hrs and 6 minutes to travel the 128 mile difference.
To do it in 1.5 hrs as you suggest, you'd have to be averaging over 85 mph.
However, I agree that Amtrak's schedule for this segment is slow in this day in age.
Fortunately, it can be dramatically improved simply by eliminating the bottlenecks and scheduling conflicts with the freight traffic along that route.
In fact, since the Texas rail rights-of-way aren't as hemmed in as they are along the Eastern Seaboard, I bet the existing freight right-of-way can be inexpensively widened to accommodate separate passenger traffic. Amtrak's Acela technology is capable of speeds up to 150 mph on suitable track, without the need for the more expensive Japanese Bullet train technology.
So the current Amtrak travel time can readily be cut in half, if Texans so choose.
High Speed Trains And Stupid Solutions
So what kind of opium pipe has Bill Lawrence been smoking???
And why didn't you answer me the first time I asked you this question?
Some of these sillies are likely bureaucRATS and are harder to dislodge than a bunch of beavers in your boathouse.
Ohh goody it’s time for the weekly “Willie Green” Rail Fairy Tale.
you’d have to be averaging over 85 mph
Guess you ain’t been on I-20 lately, heck the 18 wheelers are runjing 80.
Still when you get to the Dallas train station, I don’t think there are any car rentals and you need to be packing in that part of town, which might be hard to do after riding the Gubmint Train.
Secondly, a fast rail between Little Rock and Dallas wouldn’t be so fast having to detour south to LGV.
Athens to Kaufman? {-;
85 is pretty normal on I20, but you can also take Hwy 80 an knock off 30 miles off that distance (and fewer cops, even in the small towns except Gladewater which is a speed trap).. I make the trip twice a week to my Lewisville office, I have the schedule down to the minute (2 hours, 15 minutes from my house to my Lewisville office (1.5 hours to loop 360, another 45 minutes to the Lewisville office- all if the road is clear.)
There is an Enterprise rent-a-car over on Elm, that would probably be about a mile away from the station.
Correction, hwy 80 knocks off 15 miles..
Still when you get to the Dallas train station, I don’t think there are any car rentals and you need to be packing in that part of town, which might be hard to do after riding the Gubmint Train.
You've got to be kidding.
Dallas' Union Station is a very clean and well maintained facility that's a downtown Dallas Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It offers a variety of options for local transportation, including transfer to DART light rail and Trinity Railway Express. There are also 18 hotels and 3 car rentals nearby. Or I'm sure you could also hail a taxi in downtown Dallas if that's what you would prefer.
As an interesting bit of trivia, Wolfgang Puck's catering service also occupies a portion of Union Station. Wolfgang has one of his famous celebrity restaurants in the nearby landmark Reunion Tower. So this is NOT an unsafe part of town like you falsely imply.
Still would need good track shoes, kevlar vest and a couple of “un” concealed pistolas.
This thing ain’t gonna happen and if the gubmint wastes money on, few will ever ride.
I’m right there with you. I make the trip twice a week and even though Texas Eagle tickets are only around $30, it isn’t worth it for the extra time and PITA trying to get around Dallas once I’m there.
85 is pretty normal on I20,
So what other laws do you routinely ignore?
Daily Willie Green Choo-Choo thread.
Promoting 19th Century technology for the 21st Century.
It would take an hour to list.
NOT an unsafe part of town like you falsely imply.
Oh Willie, you are right, but only 8 to 5 Monday thru Friday. Betcha we wouldn’t be catchin our friend Willie down there after dark, at least not still in possession of his wallet.
8-5 M-F you are harassed by people selling roses and character drawers on the street corners (albeit, I’m friends with one of the latter).
I wouldn’t want to walk to Elm from Commerce at night. I love Deep Ellum, but I am not going to pretend it is safe at night.
Tax revenue. Iron fist transit.
“If it’s high speed rail, it won’t be stopping in every little town along the way.”
That’s the problem with government run rail systems. The politicians cannot keep their hands, and their purely political interests, off the eventual operating framework of the system. Locations of stations, time schedules and fares all become manipulated to obtain or keep the support of the politicians; resulting in systems that can never be self-supporting without permanent continuing taxpayer funded subsidies.
by Athena D. Merritt
Philadelphia Business Journal
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Ridership reached a record 1.27 million trips on Amtrak’s Keystone Line between Harrisburg and Philadelphia last fiscal year, state Transportation Secretary Allen D. Biehler said Monday.
From July 1, 2009, to June 30, 2010, ridership totaled 1.277 million, which was a 3.9 percent increase over the previous fiscal year’s 1.229 million trips.
Pennsylvania completed $145 million in improvements along the 104-mile line, which runs between New York and Harrisburg by way of Philadelphia, in 2006 through a joint effort with Amtrak and the Federal Transit Administration. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation launched a website to promote ridership on the Keystone Line in August 2008.
The "Keystone Line", which uses the Keystone Corridor but is not synonymous with it, is basically a commuter line.
People aren't using it to go from Harrisburg to New York but from Downingtown and Exton to Philadelphia, and from Metro Park, N.J. to NYC too, I suppose.
As someone else has pointed out, commuter rail is antithetical to high-speed inter-city bullet trains.
I don't think anyone has an issue with maintaining commuter rail in crowded urban areas where it has been in use for a century-plus albeit getting the government out of it and making it profit-oriented rather than government-job oriented would certainly be desirable.
Actually, rather than high-speed bullet trains it very well may be smarter to end service at Coatesville or Parkesburg with more trains running rather than keep the line open to Harrisburg which very well may be for based more on politcs rather than what people want.
Actually, rather than high-speed bullet trains it very well may be smarter to end service at Coatesville or Parkesburg with more trains running rather than keep the line open to Harrisburg which very well may be for based more on politcs rather than what people want.
That would be silly. Over ½ million passengers embark/disembark at Harrisburg every year. (source)
IOW, if people want the Harrisburg stop and profit could be made from it then the Harrisburg stop would be kept, right? :-)
More riders = more revenue
That is true.
OTOH, more tracks, more trains, more stations, more conductors, engineers etc. = more expenses.
If revenue > expense, that is good.
If not, a point will be reached where it is time to cut bait.
Unless, of course, the government gets involved, which means that money that would go for things people want (as per choices made with money they earn) will got to things people don't want (as per money taken from what the earn via taxes)
Look, I’m sorry that Daddy didn’t buy you that train set you wanted so bad, but get over it already.
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