Bullet train

[buzz456]

BRACE YOURSELF FOR BREAKING NEWS! Texas Central maintains that it has completed the necessary pre-construction work and is prepared to begin construction as soon as it receives the green light from federal authorities. Texas Central will use N700S Shinkansen Bullet Trains to go from Dallas to Houston at 205mph in less than 90 minutes!

bullet train.jpg

[cnwfan]

Hmmm... so that's where all those California High Speed federal rail dollars are going.

[buzz456]

Hmmm... so that's where all those California High Speed federal rail dollars are going.

The difference is in Texas they will get the job done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Central_Railway

[Railfan722]

Hmmm... so that's where all those California High Speed federal rail dollars are going.

The difference is in Texas they will get the job done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Central_Railway

Texas Central and CAHSR both got started around the same time (CAHSR in 2008, Texas in 2009). In the past 17 years, most of CAHSR's major structures are either done or close to done, and about half of the right of way has been built with tracklaying expected to start in the next year. In the same timeframe, the private Texas project has gotten bounced around between several private groups and Amtrak, before just recently getting bounced back to private hands and have spent a lot of money on "studies" without any actual engineering work. A massive design and construction contract was awarded four years ago, which seemingly hasn't actually gone anywhere. Now that Amtrak has been removed from the project by the Feds, the funding model Texas Central seems to be hoping for is to give public money to a private company to build the project, which seems like a massive waste of taxpayer money. Texas Central has already made some questionable choices in the planning phase, such as locking themselves into Shinkansen technology. Japanese companies are famously quite strict about licensing the necessary technologies out, and so Texas Central has probably locked themselves into forever buying trains and signaling equipment from Japan instead of other suppliers, like Siemens or Alstom (or for that matter any American company trying to break into the field). I would love to see high speed rail succeed in America, and if there's anywhere it would work this corridor is absolutely it, but the current state of the Texas Central project is hardly good for any of the parties involved except for private investors who stand to profit off of state and federal money. Turning over the project to Amtrak/TXDOT/USDOT and building a robust in-house engineering staff would be a far more effective use of any dollars put towards Texas Central.