- cross-posted to:
- texas@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- texas@lemmy.world
President Joe Biden is reportedly seeking to revive a project that would construct a high-speed railway from Houston to Dallas in Texas utilizing Japanese bullet trains.
According to a Reuters report on Tuesday, citing unnamed administration sources, the White House is looking to make an announcement on the project following talks between Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington, D.C., this week.
The Japanese government and the White House declined to comment on the report, though the project has seen renewed support from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told KXAS in Fort Worth on Sunday: “We believe in this.”
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Texas signed up first because it has “bullet” in the title.
They think it’s gonna be fired from a giant gun.
I’d prefer some other state to get it than Texas. If Texas is going to deny federal money for unemployment and for healthcare, then Texas doesn’t deserve federal money for other good projects.
And this is coming from someone in Texas who would benefit from it.
Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott has told state employees to try to avoid federal money because it might come with strings that require treating non rich and non whites as human.
Remember when Greg Abbott had a tantrum and basically shut down the Texas-Mexico border to most road traffic and fucked over all the rest of the US who was depending on products to come from Mexico?
Let Texas feel what it would be like to secede.
At the same time HSR could encourage social lives and urban neighborhoods that would encourage less conservative thinking. I think if we get into petty partisanship, it will just continue to spiral until we have a second civil war.
until we have a second civil war.
Please, no more… I can only get so erect.
Conservatism is a fucking scourge. We need to finish the job this time.
Are you really arguing for armed conflict in the United States?
Edit: a word
I am not. But since conservatives have been champing at the bit for years to severely oppress or exterminate the normal people, and since they give the normal people no choice in the matter but to defend our existence, the threat needs to be proactively stopped to minimize the loss of life.
I didn’t decide to be their enemy. In fact, I have turned the other cheek and politely ignored their aggression and threats for decades. And still, conservatives have decided that normal people are their enemy, despite us just trying to live our lives peacefully.
Throughout history, conservatives have always oppressed and killed their nation’s most vulnerable, peaceful people. That’s just who conservatives are at their core. What we are seeing today is that same story playing out again. Unchecked conservatism is loudly warning the normal people that it is coming for us. And conservatives are acting on those threats.
So, seeing what fate awaits me, and being told by them for a lifetime that I am their enemy, there seems to be no choice but to embrace the fight to have a chance to survive.
Fuck conservatives. They are doing this. They insist that the quiet, peaceful, thoughtful, vulnerable, normal people are their enemy. They did this and they have earned any ounce of pain their fight causes them. I only hope the other normal people will stand up and resist them as well. The fight is already under way. Most are just pretending everything is going to be OK. That’s deadly complacency for rest of us. Action is needed. Now.
So… you are advocating for a civil war. Just one that “your side” wins completely, this time. As if that’s a real possibility.
What action are you referring to, that you want from normal people?
I’m not advocating for it. I’m anticipating what conservatives have been demanding since the last one. The action I refer to is whatever is necessary to stop the threat.
I am not speaking a mysterious language here. You are “just asking questions” in a bad faith effort to search for some kind of gotcha moment. If history is our guide, the widespread stochastic terrorism and lynchings that will be at the heart of this new war, if it happens, will come from the right, not the left.
Conservatism is a plague of oppression and death. It always has been. We either marginalize it now or experience the violence that comes from unchecked conservatism.
Ok, I’ll just say it: calling for any kind of civil war is fucking stupid. And you’re saying you’re hard for one. Fuck you first wanting to kill people, you weird person.
That’s all I’m saying, no gotcha moment, you did that to yourself in the first fucking post. I agree with you about reactionaries, they’re a scourge. But fuck you for wanting them dead wholesale, which is your obvious call.
You really think the side which worships guns and survival would lose to the side with empathy?
I’m terrified of a second civil war because I know it means not just my own death, but the death of rational thought in the US.
We won last time. We didn’t finish the job, so they have been working toward a rematch ever since.
Yes they have. And we haven’t.
Both sides of the last one thought it would be over in one battle, and both sides believe the same thing again. I have terrible news how the first one went for both sides.
While I agree that Texas is not the most “deserving,” if it gets rapidly improving infrastructure it will probably at least flip into a swing state, with more liberals than fascists. “Punishing” them just lets them play victim.
I wish they were more than playing sometimes. If they’re going to claim persecution then we should persecute them a little.
is accelerationism everywhere now? just let a single good thing happen geez
They’re gonna be real pissed when they find out somebody used the word bullet to dupe them into building public transport.
Had to lol at this. Too true. Whaddaya ya mean there’s no shootin’ on this train?!
It’ll get canned as soon as Texans realize it’s not called a bullet train because of any involvement with guns.
Just make the station look like a giant gun
Spam a bunch of eagles, military memorabilia, guns, and US flags everywhere and they’ll be all over it. Bonus points if the whole train is eagle themed.
Ok, hear me out… Train station in the shape of a bald eagle with the covered track area leading out shaped like a gun penis for the eagle. The engine is shaped like a bullet, and the cars all have flames down the sides so it goes extra fast.
Texas figured it out?
Texas?
Yeah, this is a real low point. This one hurts.
They had to use > bullet> train to get them onboard.
so you just shoot the train? I gotta see this gun!
No one else got your Good Place reference so I just wanted to say, have some frozen yoghurt.
Biden shouldn’t be doing shit for Texas. He should try push this mainstream across the country. But Texas wants to secede Abbott probably find away to make this not happen anyway and funds will be stolen and wasted.
Umm. Not really, it’s because Amtrak is involved now in Texas and the Build Back Better Act has sent money for several projects not just Houston to Dallas. Cali HSR, Las Vegas to LAX, Orlando to Tampa, Seatle-Tahcoma-Portland, and Atlanta to Charlotte all got funds. All these projects (with the exception of Cali) are using federal/private funds, so state governors can’t really pull the plug (Cali HSR is a constitutionally mandated project approved by the voters of the state… to use state funds).
Maybe it’s a diesel bullet train and they’re “running coal”?
So I mentioned the odd dichotomy that Texas has in another post
Hey, trust me, I know how this shit goes. I’m in Kansas.
Plot twist. The train will be loaded into a giant gun and literally fired like a bullet because Texas.
With Texas’ hardon against regulations I forsee this having a massive derailment within two decades of it opening.
Hope that isn’t the case, because we do need better mass transit.
Eh maybe. Usually the calls for deregulation are sponsored by the industry giants. So due to there not being a strong passenger rail lobby yet, I can see the regulation being fine. Once someone is trying to get rich then the derailments will start.
Texas conservatives are notoriously anti-regulation now, after decades of being paid to build that platform. There will be as few regulations as possible (with or without a lobby); that is a guarantee.
I still think NYC-Chicago is the real test of high speed rail in this country. A route people want to take, that’s far enough to fly, between two cities where car ownership is optional.
I’m glad Dallas-Houston is happening but I wonder how much traffic it will get. In my midwestern mind they’re both just “texas big city”
It’s not surprising that the first city pair would be a commonly traveled route with cheap flat land in between. Once that’s demonstrated to work, they can start trying it for cities where the need to purchase rights for the route will be more expensive, and on terrain where long straight segments are more challenging to construct.
I wonder how much traffic it will get.
This source says average, about 24,000 people drive between the two cities any given day, and there are about 30 commercial flights per day between the cities. That sounds like a decent amount of potential demand.
But how walkable are Dallas and Houston? I think the success of this is predicated on that, because if people can’t get around without a car, they’ll take one with them.
Still though, pretty cool. Sucks it’ll be in Texas but progress is progress.
Texas is barely walkable from the back of the giant parking lot into the store.
Dallas proper has some light rail around downtown with a couple lines that travel outward, and even a train that goes from Downtown Dallas to downtown Fort Worth. It’s still difficult to get to a lot of places outside downtown, the American Airlines Center, and the State Fair ground though.
Houston I think has some buses, but it would also be difficult to get too far from downtown.
Houston sometimes has sidewalks. Sometimes.
Houston has some light rail also.
Depends on where you are, but with that 30 flight number there’s definitely plenty of people that aren’t bringing their cars with them.
Are those flights because of hub relationships? Where it will still be somehow cheaper to fly with a hop than to fly direct out of the hub?
I once lived 1hr from an airport and 2hrs from a hub. It was always cheaper to drive to the closest airport and fly to the hub. Absolutely annoying.
Yes, a big chunk of the flight demand probably comes from the fact that each is a hub for a major airline (American Airlines has its big hub in DFW, and United has one of its major hubs in IAH).
Still there are a lot of flights between the two cities for passengers who are starting and stopping their journeys there.
I mean, getting out of Texas as fast as possible is an admirable goal for the future.
Crossing the great emptiness of it is a great starting point. Like building a river backwards, starting with a delta at multiple cities.
So, let’s say such a train takes the same security as amtrack does, which is to say very little.
If the train is a viable option it would need to compete on time but there’s a caveat. The flight between the two cities is 2 and a half hours. Not including getting to the airport early, going through security, and waiting for your flight. So we can reasonably say it’s 4 and a half hours of down time.
The distance the train would travel is just over 700 miles. A 200 mile per hour bullet train at best possible speed does that in 4-5 hours. Assuming it’s express, and there are no delays.
If the train is faster and similar in cost it’s a no brainer, take the train every time. If it’s more expensive, which is will be if it isn’t subsidized, then it won’t succeed. People will see the longer travel time and not consider security and waiting around, and just buy the cheaper ticket. Then curse ass spirit air gets them stuck on the tarmac.
I’d pay more to take a train in many situations. Much more comfortable, less hassle, lower emissions.
You know they’d somehow figure out how to make it more uncomfortable to eek out more $$$ by fitting more people.
I’ve taken some of the longer train routes on the east coast, and they’re quite comfortable. Occasionally full, but it’s a lot easier to add space comfortably on a train by adding a car than it is in an aircraft.
Seems like a pretty pessimistic view…
It is. I don’t usually have a lot of faith in large scale projects
Same. I don’t fly but love taking trains, even if it takes longer.
Depends how comfortable they make the train, too. Should be significantly better than coach on a plane.
I would be so down for this
Its the absolute most no brainer route for high speed rail in the US. Two metropolises with a combined population in the 10s of millions that are around 300 miles apart, minimum elevation changes on a straight route, largely empty space in between.
When it’s successful, you can hook it into fort worth pretty directly, and suddenly you have the core of a high speed rail network in a huge state that desperately needs it.
But I’m sure someone in the Texas government will say trains are “woke” and kill the project.
No, just the airlines. This project has been around for a very long time, and it keeps getting killed by airline lobbyists.
Time for Elon Musk to create a new vapour-ware like the boring tunnel to stop mass transplantation that will compete with his electric car empire
Maybe he’ll mass transplantate himself to Mars and take a few other sociopaths with him.
Gregg Abbott in a few weeks: “Trains?! Sounds like trans… No thanks, Biden!”
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-bullet-train-abbott/
This fall (December 3, 2020), the project received approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration, and Governor Greg Abbott wrote a letter to the Japanese government, a key investor in the project, voicing his support. The potential benefits of the rail seemed manifold. It would offer travelers a ninety-minute alternative to the four-hour drive between Dallas and Houston and relieve highway congestion that’s projected to double by 2035. It would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it would create thousands of high-paying jobs at a time when Texas is suffering from both a pandemic-related recession and an oil-price bust.
“The Texas High-Speed Train will be the first truly high-speed train in Texas and the United States, connecting North Texas, Houston and the Brazos Valley in less than 90 minutes, using the safest, most accessible, most efficient and environmentally friendly mass transportation system in the world today,” Texas Central spokesperson Erin Ragsdale wrote in a statement.
Abbott’s letter, however, sparked a firestorm among some of his longtime supporters. Even before the governor expressed support for the rail project, Meier said, her circle of friends had become increasingly wary of him because they believed he was pandering to liberal interests by imposing restrictions on some businesses during the early days of the pandemic. “I was the only one I know of that was still basically supporting him,” Meier said. “If he continues to support the [train], he will not get my vote, and I will passionately spread the word.”
Four days after Abbott penned his letter, his staff walked back his support, telling the Dallas Morning News that the governor intended to reevaluate his position out of concern for Texans’ property rights and because he was provided with “incomplete” information about the project.
Dude has been all over the map, chasing whichever way popular opinion has been blowing.
The only thing certain about conservatives is they will always make the worst possible choice. Always.
It could be that transforming the land value of an couple of abandoned malls into a hot property for developers will ultimately win Abbott over. There’s a lot of money that Texas routinely leaves on the table for ideological reasons, and as the domestic market cools off we’re seeing more push back from the business wing of the party to do real actual infrastructure projects rather than just squeezing rents out of the existing stock.
I could see that. Although, I do wonder when the party will be too far gone for the corporate billionaires to have any control left.
If you consider folks like Musk and Gates to be the modern corporate Pied Pipers, I might argue that it’s their increased control that’s driving people crazy
So people can get out of Texas faster?
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Good. Let them sleep in that bed.
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Wait really? I never knew.
I mean from Houston to Dallas, so it’ll probably be dependent on where they’re ultimately going.
Airport
Both cities have airports.
To everyone outside if Texas: they’ve been talking about this for decades.
You know who will always find sneaky ways to sabotage it? The airlines.
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Lol my wife is from DFW and the first thing she said was “why the fuck would anyone want to go to Houston?”
Texas cities (like most in US, but TX seem on another level) are car centric urban sprawl. Nobody really wants to go to any of them for the city itself. We might go to the Dallas Zoo, or Dallas art gallery (both are nice), but not “Dallas”.
I do enjoy going to “London” or “Paris”.
London is so small though, the gas station isn’t even open much - better to drive to Junction. At least Paris is the County Government.
Agreed. A bunch of loud, dangerous vehicles taking up the majority of public space with their lifeless, hard infrastructure while polluting the air and filling our brains with micro plastics.
The Fort Worth zoo is so much better than the Dallas zoo.
In all seriousness, the two cities do a ton of business together. Dallas is the state’s financial capital and Houston is its largest port and energy export terminal. The air travel between these cities runs every 30 minutes from sun up to sun down, with a few overnights to boot, completely maxed out. And I-45 is a clogged bowel of a highway during every major holiday and sports event.
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I always thought thing that really brought Houstonians together was rodeo and bbq.
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I don’t care about those things
I can’t imagine why you’d be more invested in hating Dallas than eating brisket or going to the closest thing we’ve got to an amusement park since AstroWorld closed.
Not many other things come to mind that Houston broadly agrees on.
We all hate trains for some reason. But like bikes? Its a bit confused, I’ll admit.
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Honestly, I don’t know that you’d get broad consensus on any of this stuff across greater Houston
You definitely create a bunch of traffic around NRG.
excepting support for local sports teams—it’s pretty heterogenous
There’s definitely a Houston food culture, particularly with the intersection of East Asian and Creole. I had a bowl of crawfish etouffee Ramen Noodles at Tatsuya that I challenge you to find anywhere else. Houston is definitely a blended culture, but I wouldn’t call it heterogenous. The old 80s-era red lines have run thin and the appeal of cheap real estate has done more than just toss the city’s salad.
I just live here, I’ve never really felt like part of the community.
Maybe I get a different perspective living inside 610. Maybe COVID refreshed my outlook on my neighborhood. Maybe ten years in the same spot just gave me a chance to meld with my neighbors. But I definitely vibe with my neighbors more than I did out in Sugar Land or even on campus in Austin.
When I run into people at the park or in the tunnels that I recognize, despite being a a city of several million, it feels like a smaller town than it is.
Hah! Nice one
Meanwhile, China has over 30,000 high-speed rail lines.
But do they have a massive fossil fuel industry to prop up?!
yeah but how many of them are bullet trains?
The correct numbers are 159,000km of rail lines, with 5,500 commuter stations. 45,000km of those rail lines support HSR (bullet trains), serving 980 stations with 76 different HSR lines.
China has 76 High-Speed Rail lines…
Surely you mean km, and the current number is 45,000km across 990 stations.
As of December 2022, it extends to 31 of the country’s 33 provincial-level administrative divisions and exceeds 40,000 km (25,000 mi) in total length, accounting for about two-thirds of the world’s high-speed rail tracks in commercial service.
Must be nice to live in a modern industrialized country.
