The Mini Triangle

Today we’re going to wrap up our look at a hypothetical Texas-High Speed Rail system by tying together the middle. We’ve already looked at the how a privately operated high-speed system could start as a regional rail service in the Houston region, and how the Austin/San Antonio and Dallas/Fort Worth regions could be served by similar foundational lines. Now we’re going to see how these regional lines can interconnect and form a more complete system.

The mini-triangle region is one of the most economically interesting parts of Texas, and the potential for major development activity to occur there is one of the biggest reasons why I prefer this route over the other proposals that I’ve come across.

Consider the basic anchors:

• Education – Three of the state’s major Universities are located at the ends of the mini-triangle (Texas, Texas A&M, and Baylor).
• Healthcare – Emerging health centers in Round Rock, Temple and College Station are going to be major economic generators for Texas’ Future.
• Technology – In addition to the strong technology base in Austin, a lot of start-ups are operating out of College Station (and especially Downtown Bryan) to take advantage of the cheap rent, cheap student labor, and internet trunk lines that run through A&M.
• Military – The Fort Hood complex is one of the nation’s most important military facilities, and is a major economic engine for Central Texas.

When we think about the resources that exist in the state’s three largest cities (Houston, Dallas and San Antonio) the benefits of creating high-speed transportation links to these destinations are obvious. Some of the biggest economic wins would include:

• Connecting the Texas Medical Center in Houston to the emerging second-tier medical centers in Central Texas.
• Connecting the technology sector in Austin to the affordable incubator environments near Baylor and Texas A&M.
• Linking the military complex in Fort Hood with the Military complexes in San Antonio.

Lastly, there’s another huge economic benefit to building rail through Central Texas – it provides an alternate growth opportunity for the state. Where the “Big 4″ cities are already highly developed and highly spread-out, rapid rail connections create the opportunity for two important growth drivers:

1. Second-Tier cities like Waco and College Station become much more viable places for mid-size businesses as the state’s labor pool becomes increasingly interconnected between the major cities. The affordable cost-of-living in these places makes them ideal incubators for all kinds of businesses. These cities could grow to become relevant second-tier cities on a national level, not just a regional level.
2. In-between places that are currently ‘off the beaten path’ provide ideal locations for new small towns. These new towns can be designed around the train stations, and can be compact and pedestrian-oriented while still having the ‘small town’ character that fuels demand for suburban living. These represent the best alternative to suburbia – an ecologically sensible and energy-efficient place for people to live who want the peace and quiet of the country but need to be connected to the big city employment centers.

Note on the second point: Because the train operates at a different speed from the automobile, these places are not just new hubs for sprawl – they’re outside the practical driving radius of the employment centers they are connected to. The train station becomes the primary connection to the rest of the state, and the automobile takes a secondary role for traveling to smaller destinations. This is basically the model that created the first generation of small towns in Texas (and the US as a whole). Places that we love, like Brenham, Fredericksburg, and Georgetown all grew up in this fashion – and with the right infrastructure we could grow new places of the same quality and lasting value.

So what does this all look like on a map? Take a look.

The stations with white outlines represent major stations that all the trains would stop at, and the smaller stations are ‘regional service only’ stops.

So the all-important question remains: How fast are we talking about?

• Express service trains traveling from Houston to San Antonio could make the trip in about an hour and forty minutes – from Houston to Austin would take about an hour and fifteen minutes.
• Express service from Houston to Dallas would take about an hour and a half, arriving a little quicker than the Houston-San Antonio train since there are fewer major destinations in between.
• Lastly, express service from Dallas to San Antonio would take a little less than two hours.

To get between any of the major cities in Texas, direct high-speed service could take under two hours. As has been debated and discussed in many of the previous posts in this series, this is all dependent on building a system that is designed from the start to achieve this kind of high-speed service. It isn’t necessarily simple or easy, but it’s absolutely possible.

So with that we’ve come full circle on this series. We’ve looked at the major routes for High-Speed Rail in Texas, and we’ve examined the regional links that make up the foundation for a statewide system.