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  #41  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2009, 7:35 PM
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Originally Posted by AustinSloanie View Post
I drove up from San Antonio to Austin earlier today and measured the distance from the northern edge of San Antonio city limit to the southern edge of Austin city limit along I-35: 53.1 miles (44 minutes). Of course, city center to city center is 78 miles, but it's interesting to note how much closer the cities are if measured from edge to edge.


Yeah i've seen diffrent mileages my atlas says it's 82 miles Dt to Dt I guess and mapquest says 78 miles
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  #42  
Old Posted Mar 21, 2016, 5:27 PM
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It will never get 'built'; we'd have to come up with multiple billionS of dollars to get UP to move most (not all, just most) of their freight traffic, just to be able to run trains reasonably often on the existing track - the existing track that doesn't penetrate downtown Austin and has even less opportunities for TOD than does the awful Red Line.

Complete waste of time and money. Even one dollar spent on this thing is one dollar that could be more productively spent on urban rail.
Hey, guys, I'm wondering how this all turned out. Surely by now trains are running and nothing's standing in the way of this super-cool project!
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Last edited by M1EK; Mar 21, 2016 at 5:28 PM. Reason: trollface
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  #43  
Old Posted Mar 21, 2016, 10:33 PM
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Originally Posted by M1EK View Post
Hey, guys, I'm wondering how this all turned out. Surely by now trains are running and nothing's standing in the way of this super-cool project!
It doesn't look good for either this commuter rail between the two cities of Austin and San Antonio, nor both city's urban rail projects. No dedicated financing usually means no transit projects get built.

There's a lesson both Austin and San Antonio should learn from both Dallas and Houston, where urban rail systems have been built within Texas. The lesson being solving the financing questions first before planning, building, operating, and maintaining a rail transit system with long term resources, then implementing it within the available budgets per the plan. Apparently, planning the system or transit line before getting the finances locked down is a recipe for failure.

Last edited by electricron; Mar 22, 2016 at 1:47 AM.
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  #44  
Old Posted Mar 22, 2016, 7:52 PM
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Perhaps I was too subtle, as is my wont.
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  #45  
Old Posted Mar 13, 2017, 4:17 PM
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Will this ever be a reality?
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  #46  
Old Posted Mar 14, 2017, 1:37 AM
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Will this ever be a reality?
Not until a steady continuous funding sources are developed and put into place. That will require some form of taxes, which isn't likely for the project as envisioned.

The best hope for a train service between Austin and San Antonio already exists, Amtrak's Texas Eagle once a day round trip. A state supported slow train connecting these two cities, and others between San Antonio and Fort Worth or Dallas is the next likely Amtrak provided train service. A brand new privately funded HSR line instead of the slow train is the third likely scenario. The least likely scenario was the Lone Star commuter train - because local revenue streams are very unlikely to be large enough to build it.

Minnesota's 150 mile long Northern Lights intercity rail project probably is the best resource for estimating costs, they project $500 million to implement a 90 mph max speed train services with four round trips a day, up to $1 billion to implement a 110 mph max speed train with eight round trips a day. Remember that was for 150 miles, it's closer to 300 miles between Fort Worth and San Antonio, so double the prices for a non HSR train service that will require yearly subsidies. The costs to implement real HSR will depend upon how much of the Dallas to Houston HSR line can be used. It'll probably costs over $10 billion to implement, but that's just a guess.
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