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Daniel

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Has there been any recent studies on potential Dallas to Houston AMTRAK service? The last service was the Houston section of the Texas Eagle in 1995.
 
taking slow train you can go from DAL-SAS - HOU on one ticket about $54 for next week

takes 24 hours though

Texas Eagle to San Antonio than Sunset to Houston
 
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Well, not that slow.

Even if the train could average 100 mph, the trip would take about 2.5 hours. Driving at 70 mph with no stops takes about 3.5 hours with no traffic. People might go for this. Just take Southwest for anything faster, but even at that, it takes 2 hours, if you consider getting to the airport an hour early.
 
To me one of the biggest challenges with establishing service in Dallas will be getting it in an accessible location. Logic would tell you that Dallas Union Station would be perfect (TRE terminates there, and DART Red and Blue Light Rail Lines run there). However, there would need to be significant improvements in terms of parking, as there is little to no overnight parking there presently. There is plenty of room south of the station where Reunion Arena used to be. If it were developed in cooperation with the Convention Center it could alleviate a lot of parking problems in the downtown area. Access on and off of I-35 and I-30 would also be big things that need improvement as well.
 
battalion51 said:
To me one of the biggest challenges with establishing service in Dallas will be getting it in an accessible location. Logic would tell you that Dallas Union Station would be perfect (TRE terminates there, and DART Red and Blue Light Rail Lines run there). However, there would need to be significant improvements in terms of parking, as there is little to no overnight parking there presently. There is plenty of room south of the station where Reunion Arena used to be. If it were developed in cooperation with the Convention Center it could alleviate a lot of parking problems in the downtown area. Access on and off of I-35 and I-30 would also be big things that need improvement as well.
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Shouldn't be an issue if a station was established in Suburbia too. Those that go to or from downtown can do so and those that have to drive travel from Suburbia where parking could be cheap or free.
 
It is amazing how far Dallas (and Fort Worth) have come. I can walk one block from my house and catch a bus that takes me direct to Union Station. This gets me on Amtrak, the TRE, or Dart rail. From here go to Chicago, Los Angeles (and points beyond), Fort Worth or Oklahoma City. I can even go to DFW airport or Love Field. All this without touching my car.

Adding Houston would be great.

This is happening in the middle of a largely car society.
 
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So getting back on topic, I assume no one has heard of any AMTRAK studies on this corridor recently?
 
Not real recent. I don't believe any talk unless I see ground move.

NY Penn doesn't offer free on-site parking. As others have mentioned, no need with such a good Dart system. And until Southwest folds, it ain't gonna happen.
 
battalion51 said:
To me one of the biggest challenges with establishing service in Dallas will be getting it in an accessible location. Logic would tell you that Dallas Union Station would be perfect (TRE terminates there, and DART Red and Blue Light Rail Lines run there). However, there would need to be significant improvements in terms of parking, as there is little to no overnight parking there presently. There is plenty of room south of the station where Reunion Arena used to be. If it were developed in cooperation with the Convention Center it could alleviate a lot of parking problems in the downtown area. Access on and off of I-35 and I-30 would also be big things that need improvement as well.
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Dallas Union Station would also need additional platform tracks. The existing platforms are needed for DART, for TRE and for the Texas Eagle, plus UP freight lines. I doubt whether there is space to add further tracks. I was told there were more tracks in the past but the land was partly sold and built on. Is this true?
 
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Daniel said:
So getting back on topic, I assume no one has heard of any AMTRAK studies on this corridor recently?
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There is a $15 million study for PE & NEPA funded by a HSIPR grant for a Dallas to Houston HSR corridor. There is also a Japanese group that has proposed to build a HSR line. So there are serious studies and backers looking at building a HSR service. But these studies and plans are looking at a HSR corridor that have little to do with Amtrak and which would very likely not be run by Amtrak if the HSR line were to be built.

As for Southwest airlines, how much money do they make from the Dallas to Houston service these days? The profit margin for airlines for short range routes has dropped to razor thin, that is if there is a profit at all. The profit for airlines is in the longer range flights, so Southwest may not put up - or be able to - as much resistance to the prospects of a HSR corridor. They might even be in support if the HSR corridor extends to the major airports in both cities.
 
afigg said:
As for Southwest airlines, how much money do they make from the Dallas to Houston service these days? The profit margin for airlines for short range routes has dropped to razor thin, that is if there is a profit at all. The profit for airlines is in the longer range flights, so Southwest may not put up - or be able to - as much resistance to the prospects of a HSR corridor. They might even be in support if the HSR corridor extends to the major airports in both cities.
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Maybe the problem is more from a domino effect perspective. If you teach a man to use a hammer, he will see a nail in every job. But if you teach him to also use a screw driver, he may start thinking in a more differentiated manner and maybe even start asking whether further tools exist. So whereas losing traffic on Houston to Dallas may not hurt Southwest, having too many people think beyond the "airline or nothing" mindset might in the longer term stir trouble in other markets.

I once read that the New York Central competed with the Pennsy on the NYC to Chicago run, not because that route made much money for them (it didn't) but because by forcing the Pennsy to fight back on its home ground, the Pennsy wasn't making enough money to be a threat in other areas. If Southwest can prevent HSR where it makes most sense, they have little to fear where its advantages may be more marginal.
 
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Once again, this has been studied to death and continues to be studied, wasting even more money on this crazy idea of true HSR between these two cities. The proposals call for a completely new row, perhaps down the middle of I45, which would require the complete rebuilding of I45. It's hugely expensive and largely not feasible nor needed. What can be done, if TXDOT and these HSR gurus ever come to their senses, is higher speed rail using the two existing lines between the two cities as is being done elsewhere. Both these lines hosted passenger service in the past. The current UP line, which was the old SP/T&NO line hosted the Sunbeam/Hustler trains on a 4hr25min schedule until 1956. It is very busy and would require more money to bring up to speed. The BNSF line, which is shorter, hosted Burlington and Rock Island trains on a 4hr schedule until 1965 or so. The BNSF line is not that busy and would be the easiest to bring up to speed, and at a fraction of the cost of true HSR. Just like the lines out of Chicago. With 90-110mph speeds the travel time could be brought down to 3-3 1/2 hours which is less than driving and close to air speed when you figure in driving to the airport and getting there an hour before the plane leaves to go through security. SWA has long ago figured out that these people are not serious and couldn't care less how much they study this boondoggle. They have all the traffic they can handle between Houston and Dallas. All this should be initiated as part of the Texas Triangle between DFW/Houston/San Antonio/DFW. The other two legs already have passenger service in the form of the Eagle and the Sunset. All you would have to do is add to it. This is the only plan that could or would work in the current environment. True HSR is decades away, if ever.
 
Most of these things get studied exhaustively or worse before anything happens. We hear of the wonders of how fast things happen in other parts of the world, but that is not really true for the most part. We just do not see or hear about the studies that happen in those places before the dirt starts moving and the concrete starts being poured. The only possible exception wold be China but there are tow major differences that do not apply to any of the other places where high speed railroads are being built. First, they are a dictatorship, so when the powers that be say jump, everybody says yessir and asks "how high?" on the way up. Second tehy ahve been building significant milages of ordinary railroads for quite a few years before they started building high speed lines. Third, some of the lines being described as high speed, such as the one where they had a collision last year, or was it the year before?, are not truly high speed, but ordinarly railroads on which the high speed trains make part of their trip. Taiwan may have started construction in 1999 and started running trains end to end in 2007, but the first published study I have seen was dated in the late 1980's, so the thought certainly went back well before then. Thus, you have something above 20 years, and likely 30 plus, for a place where there was sufficient finance to build it and the existing railroad carried significant passenger traffic between all the points on the route of the high speed line, the parallel end to end air service had saturated the airport capacities, and the distance was near ideal for high speed rai service, so there was an unquestionable demand.

Dallas Houston is also close to a natural line for high speed rail service due to distance, travel demand, and the possibility of building about as low cost as system as possible for these things.

What could be or should be considered is the route that carried the Texas Rocket and Sam Houston Zypher. 250 miles in 4 hours flat in the 1940's and 50's.It is a BNSF secondary freight line that they might be willing to see, and is all still in place except the approach to Houston Union Station.
 
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If I remember correctly it went a bit like this...

1960's - Japan

1970's - France

1980's - Britain

1990's - Germany & Spain

2000's - Taiwan

2010's - Italy, China, Russia...

Looks like the dictators actually took longer than the lazy "red tape" democracies.

Prior to Japan the USA laid claim to the preeminent passenger rail network. In the years since we've largely abandoned and forgotten public transit on the national level. Now as we near the back of the industrialized pack in yet another category maybe it's time to take stock once again. Are we really no worse than any other democracy? Or are we uniquely exceptional like our politicians keep telling us? I would say we are not the same as other industrialized countries. We're surprisingly suspicious of science and amazingly trusting of superstition, which are two traits most modern industrialized countries do not share with us. Indeed I'm hard pressed to name even one which does. Our unique desire to mix cutting edge technology with dark ages wisdom doesn't seem to be working out that well. Average Americans seem to get less and less in return for more and more money. Maybe it's time for a change. Or maybe if we just keep on doing the same thing over and over again we'll eventually get a different result.
 
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RichardK said:
Some news on this subject:

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/cypresscreek/news/high-speed-rail-project-reaches-new-milestone/article_315a32ea-890c-11e3-8a70-001a4bcf887a.html
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I think the prospects of a Dallas to Houston HSR corridor are real. Dallas and Houston are both building light rail transit systems that will provide a local transit system for the HSR trains to connect to, although the LRT transit systems may be hobbled by decades of auto centered urban sprawl. The odds of a Texas HSR corridor getting built will go up if the CA HSR system moves ahead to construction and stabilizes as a LA to SF project, because don't underestimate the competitive politics of two Alpha states preening for bragging rights (especially on the Texas side).

Having said that, this is about a HSR corridor that would be built and run by a Japanese company. Amtrak would have little to do with the project, so continuing discussions about this should be in the HSR sub-forum. Perhaps someone could start a new thread for Texas HSR to cover this proposal along with any other news on various Texas in-state HSR initiatives. Move the last few posts to the new thread.
 
HSR in Britain is just one line at the moment, also France has started way earlier in the fifties by upgrading old lines. Population density is the point. It just makes absolutely no sense to build a high speed line through Wyoming. Where there are people there is some kind of rail service in the US - except for the lovely and very (weirdly) particular state of Texas.

The general problem is, that in the US passenger and freight railroads are split up, whilst in every other country it's been one company who ran the entire system for a very long time. In other words: In the US freight traffic comes first, in every other country (except maybe for Mexico and the rest of South America) it's passenger traffic.

Besides, Russia doesn't count. They just upgraded existing track between Moscow and St. Petersburg, thereby cancelling a truckload of locals. That made the locals (the people not the trains) along the line very angry. Between Nizhni Novgorod and Moscow this Sapsan thing is basically a german built russian average speed train. Other than this, the first sealed road between Moscow and the pacific opened just a few years ago, most of the traffic was left to trains for decades.

Also, the whole Dallas-Houston thing seems very comparable to the Canadian discussion on HSR between Edmonton and Calgary in the oil rich (what a surprise!) province of Alberta. I would just forget about the idea and concentrate on states where there is actually hope to see any progress in our lifetimes. This is despite the fact that any travel time below four hours is able to compete with air travel.
 
I live on the BNSF line in Houston and it has the room for a second mainline . The line known as the Gulf Division begins at Tower 55 in Ft. Worth and ends at the Brisbane Division on the southeast corner of Houston near Hobby Airport. The line has the possibility of being doubletracked because of explosive growth on the intermodal side of the rail community. One thing I learned is that anywhere there is a single mainline , there is likely a depletion or reduction of services on that line . Anywhere there is a second mainline , there is likely a increase in traffic and services on that line . There is also the possibility of the UP/exMP Hardy/Davis Yard Route that runs north and south to downtown in doubletrack fashion as an option. In Houston , Metro wanted to build and establish Burnett Plaza which would house Amtrak, Greyhound,and possibly Megabus and would be located on the northside of downtown near the UH Downtown Campus where SP's 23rd St. Shops (Hardy) once stood . It would be an intermodal union station joining lightrail and bus traffic with passenger rail after Metrorail's Red Line is established which is now currently in operation . The station would sit on the UP Englewood / Sunset Route Segment (East/West) Near I-45 and two blocks north of I-10. The Davis/Hardy Line would connect to the station from the north . BNSF's line from the west would connect to the Davis/Hardy Line and crossover to Pierce Yard / Settegast Yard to the east . There is a short spur running from BNSF to UP headed south to HB&T/ PTRA crossing over the Sunset Route into BNSF's Mykawa Division (South Yard ) and unto Brisbane. Metro held off on building Burnett to a later date until Metrorail is completed due to funds for Metrorail .
 
It would be a good route if it was doubletracked from Houston to Dallas or Dallas to Houston . I've been to the Dallas Convention Center and Union Station There is much room for expansion . UP and BNSF have lines that run south as they have lines that run north . All they would need is a second mainline connecting both cities .
 
Devil's Advocate said:
If I remember correctly it went a bit like this...

1960's - Japan

1970's - France

1980's - Britain

1990's - Germany & Spain

2000's - Taiwan

2010's - Italy, China, Russia...
Click to expand...
The Japanese line may have opened in the 1960s, but at its core the project was much older. It was already being planned in the 1930s (initially the plans were for German style diesel multiple units cloned from the Flying Hamburger) and I believe some construction already began around that period. So in a way the Shinkansen was the late child of a dictatorship, with of course the democratic successor government recogniszing its value.
 
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