re: Amtrak, Louisiana sign agreement to start Baton Rouge-New Orleans passenger rail service

Unless you normally fly private a southwest flight from MSY to Houston is pretty painless.

up to $30 round trip

Just popping in to say this thread has more the double the post of the thread on the announcement that the I-10 BR expansion MAY save 2%-18% in total travel time.

That project will end up costing 5x-10x or more than this rail and screw up traffic for 5-6 years with little long-term benefit. The rail will not have a negative effect on BR or NO car traffic, and could end up having a small positive effect while providing another transportation option.

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Sounds nice. But that train will be like flying Southwest Air between Kenner and Houston.

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Not a fair comparison. Southwest from Kenner to Houston actually saves some time. This will at least take 2-3 times longer.

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screw up traffic for 5-6 years with little long-term benefit. The rail will not have a negative effect on BR or NO car traffic, and could end up having a small positive effect while providing another transportation option.

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Wd know it takes our tax dollars to subsidize the BR to NO train; consequently, it will have a negative impact as we will have fewer tax dollars to spend on more important things.

Widening I 10, building a third BR bridge, upgrading highways like 30 an 1 are all vital to improving BR metro area traffic. There is not one thing to fix all our issues, but there are things we can go that add up to improving the whole.

Anybody that believes 10 from the split to the bridge is safe and doesn’t need a major upgrade is fooling himself.

Personally I’d take the train money and use it to help rebuild the Calcasieu Bridge. That is a necessary and vital project. The train thing is not. It’s too costly and will eventually have to be subsidized.

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entire country
—The entire country of France is smaller than Texas, so the distances and cost to build across the US would be ridiculous

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The US also has way more tax payers, so whats your point?

It essentially cuts the drive time in half.

Id rather have trains than force everyone to buy and EV.

And the airport experience is such shite rt now. Even if your flight is an hour, the total time traveling is much much more than that.


We waste so much money on shite, like Ukraine, why shouldnt we have better transportation in the US?

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It’s too costly and will eventually have to be subsidized

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You just described every gov't owned highway in the US. Interstates have gotten too big for them to fail so we have to keep making the problem worse by building more.

LINK

The state is planning on a 15 million dollar a year subsidy for one train. More if a second train is added.

There are all kinds of hurdles. Track improvements, getting permission fir more than one train, and on and on.

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You just described every gov't owned highway in the US. Interstates have gotten too big for them to fail so we have to keep making the problem worse by building more.

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The interstate highway system and connecting highways have help build the largest economy on the planet. All this happened when passenger trains were phased out because not enough people road the train.

There once were two different railroads linking BR and NO offering passenger service. This died because of lack of interest at the same time the highway system blew up.

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The state is planning on a 15 million dollar a year subsidy for one train. More if a second train is added.

There are all kinds of hurdles. Track improvements, getting permission fir more than one train, and on and on.

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So lets say $100 million in state capital costs plus $50/million year operating funding -- means we could run the train for 10 years before it cost the state as much as the state match for I-10 BR expansion. Plus, the train will generate some revenue in fares (not a windfall, most likely to go into maintenance/upkeep, but still something), likely won't require imminent domain land acquisitions, can be easily expanded if cost/demand supports it, and should spur significant economic development around the stations, especially the suburban stations, which leads to more local/state revenue.

Where as the I-10 BR expansion does none of that and actually takes land off the tax rolls. For hurdles, those almost sound easy compared to the hurdles of planning, approving and building a new bridge.

BR needs a new bridge and other road projects, but no reason we shouldn't do both.