Bill proposes bullet train between North Texas, Austin and San Antonio

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BlackIceing@reddit

Please do this but faster. Both train speed and build speed.

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whriskeybizness@reddit

They talk about this shit every year. Please just do something!

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strangelove4564@reddit

Sorry, best we can do is a 20-car barrel train pulled by a lawn tractor.

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HumbleHawk9@reddit

Don’t let them do this!!! So much tax payer money wasted in Ca.

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Evilsushione@reddit

Don’t ask how much all those highways cost, you won’t like the answer. Most of the California rail issue was actually acquiring the land. It’s actually coming along pretty well now.

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Well, the initial 171 Bakersfield to Merced portion is going well. Costs are projected to be $35B to $42B and hopeful completion within 3-5 years. Caltrains hope to keep to that good $200 million per mile construction costs.

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Gilamath@reddit

It's a great idea and I support it, but its utility is fundamentally limited so long as our cities' public transit networks are as feeble as the currently are

I love the idea of living in a Dallas suburb, parking the car at my local regional rail station, taking the line down to the train station, and taking a few hours' trip to San Antonio. Sounds like a phenomenal way to experience Texas and connect the state

But once I'm at San Antonio's train station, how easy will it be for me to get around? Walking in the SA heat doesn't sound fun for most of the year, after all. This is a solvable problem, but it needs to be dealt with if we want to see transportation freedom in this state, or in this country generally

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Evilsushione@reddit

Zoox is doing driverless taxi trials in Austin soon. Unlike Tesla’s these actually work.

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Gilamath@reddit

That's a neat thing, and I'm sure it has potential as a future supplement to public transit, but taxis are just not that good a solution at scale for the sorts of applications we're talking about here

Taxis can be good for filling in certain gaps in the transit network due to the flexibility of the service. They are a poor option for primary transportation except in societies that are only trying to offer transit service to relatively elite members. I hope we can take it for granted that this is not what we want to see in Texas, and not a good way to make the most of the tremendous project that is implementing bullet trains in the state

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Evilsushione@reddit

For everyday commuting I agree but This was in response to a situation where you are a day tripper transferring from a train. In that case this is a perfectly reasonable form of travel. Also I suspect we’ll see similar bus sized versions perform standard routes eventually.

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Gilamath@reddit

The bullet train, in those societies in which it has been implemented as we would like to see it implemented here in Texas, tends not to use the bullet train merely for day tripping but also for regular commuting. Especially in the new era of hybrid work, there will certainly be people who live in Waco and commute to Dallas via the train, if the system can accommodate them

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