re: Dedicated passenger train from Baton Rouge to New Orleans "3-5 years away"

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so are all of you not owning cars anymore, just taking a train everywhere?

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No. I currently live in the caribbean on a 30 sq mile island and I have a hyundai i10. However, I have traveled to europe and have friends that live or have lived in Long Island and other areas where they have good public and mass transit options and a second car per family is a luxury not a neccessity to them.

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if i have a car at $15/day in gas, and this train is $25/day, which i think is an underestimate, then that's $2,500 more a year to ride the train.

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Except for the fact you are leaving out alot of other costs associated with having a car.

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YOu also have to consider the advantage of having a car to go to lunch, or a doctors appointment, or go to an emergency, or leave early from work. Taking the train from BR means you're likely at work and traveling for 14 hours a day.

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Uber, cabs, bus, catching the train back to BR. There are plenty of options to get back home. Do you think ppl that commute to work using trains in Europe, NYC, Philly, D.C, etc don't have those problems? There are tons of options you just have to open your narrow mind and look. The train might not work for you, but it would for other ppl? Imagine how much traffic congestion would improve if just 5% of drivers took the train and bus instead of I-10 to commute? The train just give commuters more options and you might not like it but there is atleast 4 threads/day about ppl bithcing about BR and NOLA traffic at rush hour and I gurantee there are drivers out there that would love more options.

fwiw I used the train in Perth, Australia and it was great. Train to NO, Uber to the bar, train back to BR Uber home

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Who says not to own a car? Own two cars. The cost of travel is cheaper by train than by car, most times. It may make you walk a half mile, but looking around south louisiana that is something we can all use.

Also, this is a commuter train, not a train to the grocery store and back to your front door. Trolleys and other light rail would come later and that is what can reduce the need for a car.

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In the UK:

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he study looked at eight key commuter routes across the UK and compared the cost of an annual rail season ticket with the cost of owning and travelling by car.

The average annual train season ticket across all eight commuter routes comes to £2,440, or 16p per mile. If you are paying monthly instead of annually, this brings this up to £2,808, or 18p per mile.

The routes looked at were Preston to Manchester, Chelmsford to London, Durham to Newcastle, Bournemouth to Southampton, Derby to Birmingham, Swansea to Cardiff, Edinburgh to Glasgow and Weston-Super-Mare to Bristol.

In comparison a typical Ford Focus driver would pay £4,791.50 a year, or 31p per mile. This includes all the costs of running a car such as fuel, tax, insurance, car loan payments and maintenance costs.

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LINK

In NYC:

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The U.S. Department of Labor finds that, on average, people spend more than $1,100 a year to commute to Manhattan on public transportation, while drivers shell out more than $2,200 for gasoline and motor oil.

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LINK

There haven't been many cost comparisons in other US cities, but across the world commuting by rail and public transit is usually cheaper and much safer.

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I'd be willing to place a serious bet that within three to five years, we will be able to board a train between Baton Rouge and New Orleans

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I'd love to bet him against.

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Second there's no way to implement that without putting the tracks or route in somebody's yard.

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If it is on the existing road.

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Two observations

First the trolley doesn't go to the train station. They are completely separated projects.

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The Government street trolley/streetcar connects the train station to the LSU streetcar/trolley. Even if a government street car isn't built the current garden district "trolley" connects the proposed LSU streetcar to the train station and the LSU bus system Tiger Trails connects the train station to LSU.

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Second the trolley has no designated lots on either end for park and ride. It is strictly a local route from what I can see except for say lsu events

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They can easily buy the rundown buildings next to the train station and build parking garages. LSU has tons of parking options that it can rent out on non gamedays for park and ride.

Then so it is is a bus. Fine. No isdues there. But the busses run mostly empty now and I suspect that wouldn't change much. I was thinking about light rail like NO has.

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I was thinking about light rail like NO has.

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A lot of theirs is built into the roadways. The St Claude line going in is a great example.

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The Nicholson trolley doesn't go to the train stations

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I guess you didn't read and comprehend that the government street trolley will connect the 2? You get off the train and get on government street trolley and then get off government street trolley and get on nicholson trolley and bam you are at LSU. There are also current CATS routes that run past the proposed train station and cross the nicholson trolley. It is called using transfers and they are not hard to understand or use unless you have work in an oilfield or have truck nuts on your truck.

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Go out to LSU on a school day and see how many paved empty lots there are near Skip Bertman and Nicholson and you will see there aren't many.

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The lots by Alex Box and along the levee were completely empty. Paid a guy min wage to drive a gator and shuttle ppl from their car to the streetcar on Nicholson or replace some of the lots around TS with parking garages. Reserve some spots for LSU students and sell the rest. There is also this massive area of real estate that will be torn down and rebuilt they can design parking lots and garages into. The new trend in building in cities is to build with retail and parking garages on f the first 2 or 3 stories of a building and then have apartments or condos over them. Developers love that design because it offers parking for residents and business customers but also for temporary parking.

I have ridden mass transit in large urban cities and yes it works in dense areas.

And now with the govt. Trying to social engineer with our tax dollars.

But I remember riding on a train from BR to NO. They quit running trains because they lost money.

Now govt can tax us and run trains when private businesses can not. They can subsidize mass transportation like they do in BR and there is little accountability.

But will inevitably come to pass in time but knowing BR like I do I doubt it goes over big.

I could be wrong.