I vote rebuild the one that was burned downSo, where would the train stop in Shreveport?
One of the old stations burned to the ground years ago:
http://www.abandonedrails.com/Shreveport_Union_Station
Another currently lives on as a gay bar:
This, I am afraid, is not an accurate metric to gauge future ridership. Firstly, the existing Shreveport-Dallas thing is not even a train, it is a bus+train bridge. Amtrak lovers and railfans know this but for a majority of the population, this option would not even be on their radar. It is very unlikely that residents of a town that sees no passenger train would even go to Amtrak.com to see if there is an option to go to Dallas. Secondly, the existing link not only involves a transfer but is also time-consuming, unreliable (TE is not really the best among Amtrak trains when it comes to staying on time) and inadequate (since it is just once a day). To get an idea of how much patronage a Shreveport-Dallas corridor service would get, it is required to consider statistics of passengers traveling between the two cities (and also points on the route) using other means such as driving and Greyhound too because, if given an option of a 3-3.5 hour direct journey from Shreveport into downtown Dallas, quite a few self-driving and bus-taking passengers are likely to migrate to the train.
Agreed. Part of any study such as this will be to get data on number of people driving from Dallas and Fort Worth to/from Shreveport and towns in between, traffic conditions & driving time, number of air flights, bus trips and passengers, reasons for taking the trip (business, gambling, personal travel). Then model (ok, guess estimate) how much business the train will get depending on projected trip times and possible station locations in Shreveport.
In an ideal world, the mid-west and southern states would have a corridor-style rail service between their major cities, connecting to the existing LD routes. Something like this-
Well, let them. Human beings should take trains!
For which Texas has a $15 million grant from the stimulus HSIPR funding to perform preliminary engineering and NEPA review for a "Dallas - Fort Worth to Houston Core Express Service" as the project is titled. The funding has been obligated, so the funds are in place.
Don't you think those two statements are linked?
Once again they are still studying this thing to death and wasting more tax payer money. We will never see 150mph trains on an entirely new ROW in any of our lifetimes. There are two existing routes between Houston and Dallas, both of which hosted passenger trains until their demise. The shortest and fastest route is the BNSF route which is 249 miles and had four hour service from the late 1930's until the mid 1960's. This route is in good shape and is lightly used. The other route is the former SP(now UP) route through College Station and Hearne. This route is 264 miles and had 4hr 25min service until the mid 1950's. Amtrak restored service on this route briefly in the 1990's with a 6 hour train. Needless to say it didn't catch on. This route is very busy along certain sections. I don't know what TXDOT is looking at, but they are most likely just wasting their time and our money.
No, Bossier City is Shreveports twin city on the east bank of the Red river. It looks like they want to take the train over the river and have the terminal station there as well as one in Shreveport itself.
I like the idea of a service Dallas-Little Rock-Memphis, and I see you've chosen the abandoned but still usable Rock Island line Little-Rock-Memphis, which has always been the most direct. I think if you are trying to have a corridor rather than express service Dallas-Houston though, you should have it serve Bryan-College Station since it is a pretty significant intermediate point, especially once you consider all of the student population there.In an ideal world, the mid-west and southern states would have a corridor-style rail service between their major cities, connecting to the existing LD routes. Something like this-
Also, pigs would fly.
Until that happens, don't get your hopes high on any new corridors actually seeing the light of day in this part of the country.
Don't read too much into the routes. I merely connected the cities using Google Maps so the routes you see are actually roads, not railroad tracks!
As a Shreveport resident, I'm not sure I believe that a SHV - FTW only train is the wisest move. I agree and stand wholeheartedly with the above statement. I would definitely be interested in knowing how a FTW-NOL corridor train might perform. Then you raise the issue of casino traffic access. The only way to do that by using either the KCS or UP routes from Dallas area, would be to cross the Red River bridge and then down a short, but little used piece of connecting track to KCS's line towards Baton Rouge and New Orleans. That track could also be the method in which the train is turned each day. KCS's line to BTR is not signalled.
I would agree with you Johnny as that route has the most traffic potential. But for start up it would be much more expensive than the BNSF route because of the freight traffic and UP would require a lot of improvements to upgrade the line to accommodate 4 1/2 hour service. Either route requires substantial grade crossing improvements in the urban areas and Houston needs a real passenger station. Recently there has been some suggestions to utilize the downtown post office as the new intermodal center which would be great as it sits where the old SP station used to be. Dallas of course still has their Union Station and uses it for light rail and TRE. However, even there they only have the outside platform available for intercity service. To get the 'Texas Triangle' service going is going to require substantial investment in infrastructure. San Antonio desparately needs a central station and some track rework to speed up entry and exit times in both directions.
Thing is George, all that could be easily done for less money than trying to restore Houston Austin or some of the other boondoggles TEXDOT has come up with lately and you would have a viable corridor between Texas two largest population areas. The Aggies get a bus connection from college station. You could also connect Huntsville and Sam Houston State with the same bus route. The other two sides of the triangle(DFW/SAS/HOU) already have service, all you have to do is add to it.
Running a Dallas-Houston route through College station is one of the options in the $15 million TX DOT preliminary engineering and NEPA documentation project. The application and supporting documents for the project can be found here. Applied for $18 million, got $15 million. The project will look at 3 alternative routes: UPRR, BNSF, and a green field route following I-45. More links to the Texas DOT HSIPR applications are here.
