from the Thomas-the-Tank-engine-on-steroids dept.
One company in Texas is looking to bring Japanese technology to a potential 240-mile high-speed rail route between Dallas and Houston:
Texas Central Partners LLC, a U.S. company aiming to build a high-speed rail link in the southern state, is envisaging Japanese companies potentially providing vehicles and technologies for its planned bullet train service connecting Dallas and Houston.
In a recent phone interview with Kyodo News, Texas Central CEO Tim Keith reiterated that the shinkansen technology of Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Central), Japan's lead bullet train operator, will be employed for linking the two major cities, about 385 kilometers apart.
"Texas Central Partners is one hundred percent committed to the shinkansen system with JR Central as our life-of-system partner," Keith said.
Nearly 50,000 Texans, sometimes called "super-commuters," travel back and forth between Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth more than once a week. Many others make the trip very regularly. The approximately 240-mile high-speed rail line will offer a total travel time of less than 90 minutes, with convenient departures every 30 minutes during peak periods each day, and every hour during off-peak periods – with 6 hours reserved each night for system maintenance and inspection.
Kyodo reprint at The Japan Times.
A study commissioned by Texas Central Partners estimates a $36 billion economic impact through 2040 from its $10 billion Dallas-Houston rail project. Proposed measures by the state legislature to prevent the project failed in 2015. Skeptics doubt the company will meet its goal of selling tickets starting in 2021, and point to the necessity of using eminent domain to acquire land needed for the project, which the company claims is a "last resort". Kyle Workman, president of Texans Against High Speed Rail, has created a group of Texans opposed to the use of eminent domain and taxpayer funding for the high-speed rail project.
Related Stories
A private venture that aimed to build high-speed rail between Los Angeles and Las Vegas has fallen apart:
XpressWest, the private U.S. firm proposing to build a high-speed rail link between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, terminated a joint venture with Chinese companies less than nine months after the deal was announced, citing delays faced by its partner.
Las Vegas-based XpressWest said the decision to end the relationship stemmed from problems with "timely performance" and challenges that the Chinese companies, grouped under a consortium called China Railway International (CRI), faced "obtaining required authority to proceed with required development activities".
XpressWest was started by Las Vegas developer Marnell Companies. It formed the venture with the Chinese consortium in September, infusing $100 million into the project. XpressWest had expected to break ground as soon as this year on the project, which one analyst estimated to be worth $5 billion.
The announcement is a blow to China, which has built the world's largest high-speed rail network in less than a decade. The XpressWest project was seen as a foothold into a burgeoning U.S. high-speed rail market and an opportunity to showcase China's technology.
One sticking point was a federal funding requirement that high-speed trains be built in the United States. XpressWest says it will continue to pursue other partnerships.
Related: Texas Company Looking to Japanese Partner to Build Dallas-Houston High-Speed Rail, Opposition Mounts
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @07:11PM
then he'll get Mexico to pay for it, since he is the master of the Art of the Deal.
(Score: 2) by middlemen on Wednesday December 30 2015, @07:40PM
Texas Against $ANY_TECH_EXCEPT_GUNS
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:11PM
That's silly. I don't believe there's a gun factory in Texas. I might be wrong, but I've never seen one. There's one in Arkansas, but never saw one in Texas.
How's your TI calculator holding up? Those damned things have been around for fifty years or more, and they're still one of the best sellers among people who need a real calc. There might be better, but I'm not advanced enough a mathemitician to know. My son who is a mathemitician loves his TI.
A huge amount of the chemical industry is located in Texas. Houston is synonymous with refineries, chemical, and research. Aside from the harbor, and the import/export business, if you took away the refineries and chemical plants, there wouldn't be much to Houston.
Tech. Come to Texas and look around. It may not (or, it may) compete with Silicone Valley, but there aren't a lot of states that beat Texas for Tech. Maybe Mass - computers and high tech were entrenched around Boston for as long as Texas Instruments has existed.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:14PM
Yes, yes, I know - it's mathematician with three "A"s, not three "I"s.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @11:53AM
This is a tech site, that's not the one I'd worry about
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @12:30AM
Here's a list of 13 gun manufacturers in Texas:
http://www.armsdealer.net/businesses/category/gun-manufacturers/texas [armsdealer.net]
Enjoy.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:34PM
Nice find. Apparently, I have simply never been in a neighborhood where I might have seen any of these. I probably should have known that BAE is in Texas. I've also heard of Cross Creek, had no idea they were in Texas. Most of the others appear to be smaller, specialty shops. Points for being interested enough to look!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:34PM
Almost nobody living in Texas is a Texan, which is weird.
Almost half the population there today, wasn't living there 20 years ago, which sounds crazy but is true.
About twenty five million people live in texas, of which about ten million are texans, about 4 million are legal immigrants and an absolute minimum of 2 million are illegals. The other ten or so million came from other US states. There's a lot of rounding going on.
You're more likely to run into a New Yorker or an El Salvadoran in the Houston than an actual Texan as in someone from Texas. Its very LARP-y, a million of us are gonna show up per year and pretend we're texans, all probably never meeting actual texans... OK then.
Its pretty much a foreign country. Not that its bad, I'm just saying its foreign. Houston for example is about a quarter white, quarter hispanic, quarter black, quarter the rest of the planet. Really old people both texan and the rest of the country have this funny notion that its still 1950 and everyone living in Texas is a white evangelical, whereas in 2015 only like 1/4 the population of Texas is white to begin with, and all the hispanics are catholics and all the blacks are historical baptist more or less. You're probably more likely to meet a catholic from texas than anything else.
Texas is a relatively poor state. Half the individuals make less than $30K, half the families pull in less than $40K/yr. Houston metro area "only" has about 6 million people. They're talking $10B which means it'll cost no less than $30B. This makes the choo choo line a little weird of a purchase. On one hand the entire project is only like 1/20th the "GDP" of just that one city, so spread out over a couple years it smells affordable. But on the other hand its going to price itself not much cheaper than a flight which is a couple hundred bucks and this is a city where half the population lives on less than $30K/year, so who they think will ride the choo choo is mysterious, or how it'll ever come close to breaking even. This results in a lot of political butt hurt about choo choo's where basically you're collection huge amounts of taxes from poor people so a tiny number of rich people can profit off construction contracts and a fast commute. Its like taxing everyone in DC, especially the poor people, to buy Mr Trump a new jet.
Texas isn't as fragmented as most states, its more coastal. Well, I know, its on the gulf coast, what I mean is metro Houston has 6 million residents and like all of them live in the city limits of Houston, but for example in the midwest I live in a metro area of about 6 million that has like 200 little municipalities and "the big city" we're famous for has less than 10% of the metro population. In Texas a dude who says he lives in Houston probably really does and has a postal address to prove it, in the upper midwest a dude who lives in "big midwest city" almost certainly lives in a burb as per postal address or GPS coordinate.
The few texans I actually know (some do move out, you know) seem to like any outdoors tech, and they like resource extraction tech (oil well gear, although Texas's peak oil moment was in the 70s or something, there are still energy companies out there, peak doesn't mean theres none, it just means there no more growth). And they like tex mex cooking, which I guess is a technology, sorta.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:42PM
(My info above is a poorly documented pile of stuff I bothered to verify in wikipedia and stuff I've been lectured on by ex-Texan coworkers. I'm not sure if there is such a thing as an ex-Texan, kinda like ex-Marine. Some of its probably wrong but none of its intentionally falsified. Some of the coworker BS is probably well rounded up, would not be surprised if Houston only has like 3 million people)
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday December 30 2015, @07:40PM
I haven't been to either city, but an enabling technology for these rail projects is a car-free experience at the destination. I would imagine that Texan cities are the classic American city, requiring a car. Anyone want to comment?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:00PM
I've spent a fair amount of time in both cities. My youngest lives not far from Dallas. The cities keep growing and growing - Dallas-Ft Worth has spread out over God knows how many hundreds of square miles. Don't bother with the maps - one town runs into the next, and nothing to tell you that you've moved from one city to the next.
Both cities positively suck for commuters. Actually, they'd have to move up a long way to suck, they are abyssmal. If you don't have a car, you're screwed. If you've got a car, you're really screwed, five days a week - presuming that you commute to work five days per week. Weekends, things improve to the point that they suck. Like most other cities - Chicago, New York, or L.A, if you run through them at night, you can haul ass.
The corridors between Dallas & Houston, between Dalls & the Alamo suck almost as much. I-10 between Houston and the Alamo isn't so bad, but give it another ten years, and it will be just as bad. Rush hour, everything crawls, and non-rush hours, things are merely sucky.
Mass transit? I've seen a few buses around Dalls - Ft. Worth, but they aren't worth talking about. I guess maybe Houston some buses, but I can't actually recall seeing any. And everything within the triangle I've described is only going to get worse with time.
Now - if they could just ship all the Yankees living in the Dallas area back home - the traffic would be cut by 60% or more. There really aren't all that many Texans any more. All Yankees.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:13PM
Been to Houston in the summer.
Did not see the city, except briefly. Stepped outside, melted into my shoes and had to be hozed off of the sidewalk.
After resusitated, I took cabs everywhere. Not cheap either.
I agree that the destination travel options mean way more then the getting-there options. If the developers have very cheap day-rate rentals, (maybe electrics) as well as their own depot-to-destination busses they might make this work.
But all too often people just want to build their part and walk away from the problems.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:21PM
You're sounding a little like my stepdad. He passed through DFW early in WW2. He said it was the only place in the world where he stood in mud up to his knees, with dust blowing in his face. He had no desire to ever go back to Texas.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:37PM
Others here are saying that the public transit sucks on those cities (cities with sprawl tend to be like that, it's hard for public transit to work well when the city sprawls too much), and that the cabs are expensive.
This is exactly the situation where Uber excels.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 30 2015, @07:53PM
Sure, it's not cheap to build a high-speed rail line, but I would expect that a high-speed rail line might well be cheaper to build and maintain than I-45 is, especially once you factor in the costs of accidents and car insurance due to so many using that road. And the kind of speed they're talking about would turn a 4-hour trip into a 90-minute trip, which I would have to assume is worth something to somebody since a 1-hour flight between the two cities goes for $172 round trip.
So I don't think the opposition is really about money. I doubt it's really about eminent domain either, since the route would be more-or-less along an existing interstate. My guess is that the opposition really comes down to "High-speed rail is an assault on our freedoms!"
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @07:58PM
No. It's a few scars and mounds in an attempt to help remove the product or manage the project, with Kyodo low-flow toilets. It aught to build employed audition for its Wars.
-- OriginalOwner_
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:47PM
My guess is that the opposition really comes down to
The way it usually works nationwide in general is a bunch of rich guys want big contracts and want the rails to only serve them, but they'd like all the poor people to pay for it and also have their houses demolished. Its the same thing with street cars "us rich people need a hand out boo hoo"
Usually the -D side latches on as a "public transit is always good because they're unionized" and usually the -R opposes because they always oppose the -D side.
Usually the -R side opposes all trains including privately funded cargo, which I can't make any sense of, other than maybe they're trying to appear consistent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 30 2015, @09:22PM
Your arguments seem woefully incomplete:
* Some of the -D type politicians and groups would likely support high-speed rail not due to unionized workers but due to the lower CO2 emissions for moving 1 high-speed train versus 100+ cars needed to move a similar number of people.
* Some of the -R type politicians and groups would likely oppose high-speed rail because of their ties to the people who sell gasoline and diesel fuel to the 100 cars.
Neither of which explains why lots of ordinary people would be opposed to it. In California, similar proposals were shot down primarily because of the fear that the high speed rail would bring Those People to the places in between the major cities. So what's the major emotional driver of the opposition in Texas?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 30 2015, @11:45PM
If only you were right!
https://theweek.com/articles/540002/most-expensive-publicworks-project-history [theweek.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 31 2015, @01:03AM
Judging by the "supporting opposition" page on their website, this group is a front for the interests of ranchers who will have their pastures bisected by the rail line.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday December 31 2015, @02:38PM
They're incomplete because they're fuzzy. The train is never going to be full and low speed trains are more efficient than cars but high speed ones are not, and the sheer CO2 requirements of the track construction vs existing roads mean they'll never, ever break even environmentally at a small scale. Now go all "TGV" like France and finally the balance shifts...
This ties right back into the energy company reference for the -R. Again, its close to a wash although they'll probably over the lifetime of the system use more energy than not building the thing.
Remember there's a convenience factor. I can be in downtown (big city) in less than 2 hours thanks to commuter rail, so there are additional trips I'll take to visit museums or just to F around that are only possible because I can avoid the car hassle. Environmentally we'd be far better off without the trains and with me sitting on my living room couch, but here I am at the big city art museum instead.
The whole "those people" thing doesn't apply when tickets are going to be like $200. Everyone on the train has nice new clothes and Apple devices prominently displayed, other than the old order Amish, which is always interesting contrast to see. Trains are for rich / well off people who have time to burn and enjoy the journey (the ones in a hurry take a helicopter or corporate jet). You do see old retired people a lot too, seeing the country from ground level. Not going to make fun of those folks, I'll probably be one in a few decades, if society doesn't collapse. Taking the train from national park to national park, etc.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:20PM
I don't have a problem if they have to invoke imminent domain a couple of times to build a new railroad, that sort of thing is why it exists. Argue about the details? Yup, but the basic idea is sound and at our present level of social technology a government that does that is the best solution we have.
Public funding of a private railroad is an entirely different thing, 100% opposed. Public funding of a Japanese railroad doubly so. I know economic nationalism can easily lead to bad places but taxpayer funding of a foreign government building a railroad in TX? Oh Hell no. And yes, I said foreign government, since good luck identifying where a Japanese rail company ends and the Japanese government begins. If the private sector can't build and operate it at a profit it should not be built. And no, the U.S. or TX govt should not just build it itself either, we have enough track record of government rail projects being disasters to think another one will succeed where so many have failed. Choo Choos are almost as big a money sink as airlines, private industry rarely make a profit at either.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by MSC_Buff on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:37PM
Please stop these stupid high speed rail projects. You spend billions of dollars to build a system to get from point A to point B but people really want the rest of the alphabet. Until you can offer Joe Sixpack the same freedom as his car the rail projects will fail...fail...fail. SkyTran tackles the problem with a unique solution and is really the only way forward for personal transportation. Do you want another lane on your highway? Screw that...it solves nothing. How about self driving cars? Screw that...they solve very little.
http://www.skytran.com/ [skytran.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AndyTheAbsurd on Wednesday December 30 2015, @09:05PM
This is exactly the problem....we can't build from point A to point B, because people also want to go to points C through Z; but we can't build an entire network at once because connecting points A through Z (even in some sort of hub-and-spoke type system) is perceived as "costing too much". Well, you gotta start building somewhere, people. Just because you can't get from point A to point Q today doesn't mean you'll never be able to get there - unless you never let the first link in the chain get built.
Meanwhile, people are sitting in traffic, wasting millions of gallons of irreplaceable fossil fuels, fuming about "why don't they expand the roads" (which doesn't work, BTW), eating fast food that gives them heart disease because they were stuck in traffic so long that they don't have to sit down to a proper meal, and listening to Rush Limbaugh and whatever other fear-inducing right-wing pundits are on the air now because they're so addicted to be outraged that they never even stop to consider things rationally. [But whatever, it's their lives and they can die of a heart attack at 40 if they want. I'm going to continue to live close enough to work that I can commute by bicycle and eat real food and actually think about things instead of relying on knee-jerk reactions.]
[This was probably an ill-considered post but I'm leaving it here anyway. If you don't like it, fuck you.]
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 30 2015, @11:26PM
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:35AM
I've lived in Asia, Europe, and the Tri-State area in the United States, all areas with healthy rail systems. It works. Many Americans who live in areas without rail assume that you would have to build a rail spur to every house to cover the points C to Z you were talking about, but you don't. You don't have to all at once, or ever, because rail travel is different than car travel. You drive to the train station, park the car in the lot, and ride the train into the city (if you're talking about commuting). If you live close enough to walk or bike to the station, even better. You get a little exercise and arrive at work more awake and ready to go, having also had time to read the paper (or catch up on emails, whatever) on the train.
Intercity rail is much the same getting to the station, and much better than flying because it almost always goes from city center to city center. If you have high-speed rail, it's phenomenal. You can get up and walk around, get a snack from the dining car, see the country as you travel, and when you factor in not having to take a taxi in from the city edge and the hassle waiting for your bags, the speed advantage of the plane for short- and medium distances is nullified.
How I wish we had something like the TGV or Shinkansen in the United States. I'd never fly again, unless it were across a large body of water.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday December 31 2015, @04:56AM
I just wonder if somehow all the vocal opposition to high-speed rail doesn't flow from basically the same source as the conspiracy that tore up all the electric trolley lines in metro areas like Los Angels and many other cities. In the 1930s A small company, National Cities Lines started to acquire rail lines in large US cities. These electric rail line were then torn up and replaced by bus lines. It was funded by General Motors, Firestone Tires, and Standard Oil. They made money first by selling buses, tires for the buses and fuel to run them. Then when the bus lines fell from favor, they made billions selling cars, tires for cars and fuel for cars.
So who is funding all the opposition to high-speed rail in this country? Is it auto manufacturers, auto parts suppliers and/or fuel companies?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy [wikipedia.org]
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Wednesday December 30 2015, @10:13PM
I'll take the hyperloop.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Thursday December 31 2015, @01:20AM
Yeah, that's why when I travel the 300 mile trip to the office once a week I drive for 4 hours each way rather than driving for 10 minutes, spending 1h50 on a train playing KSP, then 20 minutes on the metro.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Bobs on Wednesday December 30 2015, @08:57PM
I think highSpeed rail has been a good investment for many but if the Hyperloop tech pans out we are going to have a massive transportation system disruption.
Building this will take years and if HyperLoop testing is good then I suspect most highSpeed rail projects will cancelled within a couple of years.
If I was in charge I would wait a bit before starting on any new high speed rail projects.
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloopalpha [spacex.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday December 31 2015, @01:20AM
There's always some fancy new solution that's "just around the corner honest". In the meantime the rest of the world carries on building rail.
Hyperloop will be great, as great as Maglevs, and PRT. I don't see those taking the world by storm, and they have actual real life installations.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 31 2015, @03:39AM
A hyperloop would be great for coast-to-coast trips, but you could do quite well regionally in the US with the high-speed trains the world has already had for 30-40 years. In fact I'd go so far as to say that you could wire up the NE US down the Eastern seaboard, as well as run out to Chicago and the other large cities in the near Midwest and South and have quite acceptable travel times.
Washington DC delenda est.