Texas’ Long-Awaited Bullet Train Plans to Start Construction

Some folks in Europe are looking at a 2030 network of high speed night trains that would take the place of longer flights. I once took a ferry from France to Dublin and I must say, it was great. Instead of wasting a day in airports and crammed onto a plane, we boarded around 1800, ate and drank while watching passing ships, walked around the deck, and slept like babies with the gentle rocking. Woke up, took a shower, ate breakfast, and docked in Dublin at 0930 ready for the day. Combining a hotel night and travel to sleep most of the miles is the way to go. Before the pandemic, there were several night trains in Europe but few were high speed.

Here's the map, which even has some ferry connections. The Russian lines are probably not happening anytime soon, but most of the other ones could be in place by 2030 or so. Overnight trains from London to Rome, Lisbon to Marseille, and Barcelona to Munich sound awesome. London to Rome is a bit under 1,200 miles. For reference, from Houston, 1,200 miles gets you to Phoenix, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, DC, Miami, and Mexico City while getting you close to San Diego, LA, Vegas, and NYC.

 

lol. After seeing the above pic, I rememebered somebody sent me this a month or so ago :

 

Not sure what is lol or the point...
Texas is big, so?
We've lost all sense of purpose in this country, maybe the world has as well.

 

Well, I thought explaining it, but I don't think I'm going to get any point across in this thread. Everybody is triggered about everything in here. But as we've lost all sense of purpose and a reason to live, I'll just move on. Woe is us.

 

“We choose to go to the Moon,” Kennedy said. “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

 

I'll always post this guy's channel when it comes to highways.



I guess at some point when highways and outlying roads become unafforable for cities to repair/rebuild, then maybe we start tearing some down and replace with mass transit?

Cuz we won't use mass transit till we are forced can't afford to.

 

Yup, The Not Just Bikes guy is amazing.

I loved his video where he pondered why do we have so many vehicles that crash into buildings in North America.

He concluded that if that happens, it's not the driver's fault. It's a problem with street design.

 

Ya. One thing I can't get over now is speed limits on our "stroads".
Arbitrary 30 or 35 mph on four lane divided road with big median in the middle. Of course people are going to go 45-50! You have to make people "feel" they are going too fast or slow for a road. It can't just be a number posted.

American cities are just designed poorly because we have land. Plenty of it. And we love cars.
We can pivot from here or double down on this poor design.

Ah who am i kidding, it's easier to argue to OS TRIG about Trump in the D&D.

 

That's a rather small Europe missing whole countries.


Here's another one for comparison:

 

The reason I started laughing wasn't because of the size comparison, which I couldn't care less about - it was because of :

A rail network that could possibly connect Prague, Paris, Vienna, Milan, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Madrid, Istanbul, etc.

vs.

A rail network that could possibly connect Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and hell, I don't know... El Paso? Laredo? Lubbock?

The graphic had me chuckling because one had me daydreaming of traveling some of the greatest cities on the planet and traveling through centuries of varied cultures, food, architecture, and civilizations while the other had me thinking about maybe hitting a few pretty good bbq joints.

 

Okay, fair, I see your angle now. My point is just that without the inter connectivity that rail might provide, no city in Texas will become anything remotely interesting. Texas should be worth investing in, for its future. Too many only care about the here and now.

 

There is no reason to leave Texas.

 

Yep, so that proves building HSR in Texas is feasible.

I've been to Heidelberg, Germany which has a population of about 150k. Germany has something called the Autobahn. They also like their cars in Germany too.

Heidelberg is the same size as Waco yet Heidelberg has rail service.

In fact, 40 towns in Germany have local rail (aka trolly) systems.

It's a myth that only big cities can justify rail.

 

Honest question: is high speed rail actually more efficient than our airline routes for the size and number of cities the US has?

 

That's America, man. Chose cars over rail. Environment? That never came up. Greed got us to this point. Make money.

 

Yeah, pretty much. lol. There are parts of DFW that are talking about considering JPods/Transpods from what I've read (like Plano and Fort Worth). Those would be kind of neat, but I doubt I'll see them anytime soon - at least not on a large scale.

 

The movie Singles needs to be re-released in theatres.

 

What does "efficient" mean?

One could argue that drinking a protein shake is more efficient than eating steak.