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.”
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.
So people can get out of Texas faster?
I mean from Houston to Dallas, so it’ll probably be dependent on where they’re ultimately going.
Airport
Both cities have airports.
Texas has the second highest domestic migration in the country (second only to Florida). New York, Illinois and California (worst) have negative migration rates.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_net_migration
Good. Let them sleep in that bed.
Texas is getting a new bullet train soon.
Wait really? I never knew.
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Having lived in houston, I’m not sure what you’d do without a car there for many destinations. I guess it is at least fewer cars and emissions betweenr the two even if many will have to rent a car or taxi around the cities themselves.
Hign speed rail is really more effective at cutting down short domestic flight and the number of cars driving on interstates than it is at enabling car-free lifestyles. Not to say it doesnt help with that, but the correct tool for that job is local transit and bikable/walkable communities, which both Houston and DFW are working on, even if they are under constant threat of regression by the irresponsible actions of TXDOT aka the highway widening mafia
I don’t think most people get how big houston is; its sprawl is nuts. I lived not far from where I-45 meets I-10 for many years. Getting to my rehearsal studio a bit northwest of there frequently took nearly an hour (288 and BW8 IIRC, but I might be misremembering this far on) most times of day. Getting out to see my friends in Katy (still pretty much Houston) could take 1.5 hours. Getting across houston can take a couple of hours, even without traffic on the freeway. It is huge.
I love highspeed rail (I’m on the bullet trains in Japan usually at least 1 round trip every couple months), but I think houston in particular is challenging. I’ve been to the DFW area, but not spent enough time there to comment on that end’s public transit.
Right but that’s the point. If these cities don’t have good transit and walkability, will HSR be able to succeed?
Acela is a huge success because it connects cities with good transit and walkability. When you get to your destination, you don’t need or want a car. When you get to Houston, how do you get where you’re going?
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!
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.
Maybe it’s a diesel bullet train and they’re “running coal”?
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).
No one else got your Good Place reference so I just wanted to say, have some frozen yoghurt.
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.
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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.
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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.
Are you really arguing for armed conflict in the United States?
Edit: a word
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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?
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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.
is accelerationism everywhere now? just let a single good thing happen geez
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.
Yeah, not going to happen. Most projects of this size are dead in arrival, even if faintly realistic at the start.
How about you just start with good rail infrastructure and upgrade and improve there? So many more gains for a fraction of the cost.
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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”.
The Fort Worth zoo is so much better than the Dallas zoo.
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.
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
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.
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If we get a bullet train in the US it should be something like a DC to San Francisco route, make a proper substitute for cross country flights.
That would be awesome, but I think the best value would be with a run up the northeast (DC-Baltimore-Philly-NYC-Boston). All massive population centers close together.
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 signed up first because it has “bullet” in the title.
They think it’s gonna be fired from a giant gun.
A bullet train? in my Texas?! That sounds like some east coast liberal anti-car woke socialism!!
We dont want none of that hippy dippy liberty stealing foreigner mass transit in our glorious state!
/s for the oblivious
But it has the word bullet right in it. Sounds like you’re anti gun. Why do you hate freedom?
Mount a gun on it and you got a deal.
I demand steer horns.
Steer Horns that shoot bullets out of the ends.
Just three or four decades after the rest of the civilized world! Yeah!
The year is 2008 and Texas residents are being promised a bullet train.
The year is 2016 and Texas residents are being promised a bullet train.
The year is 2024 and Texas residents are being promised a bullet train.
