[ featured ] archive
Cable-Propelled Transit
Via Houston Strategies, I found this article about modern cable-propelled transit systems very interesting. Say the words “cable car” and most people think of trolleys being towed up and down San Francisco’s hilly terrain. Most view them as a charmingly antiquated heritage system for the tourists, not as modern mass transit. But cable cars are [...]
Asnychronous Travel
People often talk about the value of transit in reducing congestion, or in reducing commute times by providing an alternative to congested freeways. This is all fine, but there’s another benefit to efficient regional transit service that I personally find much more valuable. Transit provides travel redundancy – an additional option for people to get [...]
$2.50
I was browsing through some data about historical gas prices, when I found some an interesting graph from the Energy Information Administration. Immediately something jumped off the page at me: when looking at historical inflation-adjusted gas prices, every time the price goes above $2.50 we’ve had a major economic meltdown.
Perception vs. Reality
General perceptions often don’t match the reality on the ground. Consider a recent study in San Francisco – they found that over 80% of downtown shoppers arrived without a car, but most business owners believed that all of their customers arrived by car. How do misperceptions like this impact Houston?
The Mini Triangle
Today we’re going to wrap up our look at a hypothetical Texas-High Speed Rail system. We’ve already looked at the how a privately operated high-speed system could start as a regional rail service in the major cities, now we’re going to see how these regional lines can interconnect and form a more complete system.
The North Texas Corridor
Today let’s take a look at how High-Speed Rail service could connect to North Texas. The Dallas/Fort Worth area is one of the more interesting places to consider rail deployment, because they’ve got by far the most existing rail service. How can a new regional rail line lay the foundation for future statewide high-speed service?
The Capital Corridor
Today let’s look at the next branch of the Texas High-Speed Rail main lines: the Capital Corridor. This connection, running from San Antonio to Austin, offers one of the best opportunities for regional rail as a precursor to a state-wide high-speed system.
The Brazos Corridor
Continuing our look at High-Speed Rail in Texas, today we’re getting to the fun part: intercity travel. As you recall in the long series of previous posts, for the sake of this series I’m imagining a privately owned and operated rail system. As a private enterprise, the rail system would need to start small, building [...]
Houston – Part 3
To finish laying the framework for inter-city rail, we need a regional corridor that serves Northwest Houston. Today we’ll take a look at the Northwest Corridor, and see what it looks like when we tie this in to the rest of the system.