Cheap land should theoretically make building transit easier. The fact that we continue to pave over old rail routes rather than building out rail on old shitty roads is purely a political decision.
Build trains over intercity highways? It's basically impossible with any American politician. A transformation like that would take ten years, but no American politician thinks further than two years ahead and literally won't be in office long enough to implement it.
Consider I-10. It was originally planned to support a rail corridor adjacent to the roadways. Ultimately, the plan was scrapped to build toll lanes where the rail line was supposed to go. An even more glaring example was the Westpark Tollway, which was built over the top of an old rail line that was originally intended to be the Blue Line commuter rail from West Houston into the Galleria Area.
Not only is rail around and through intercity highways possible, it is often the original intent of city planners and civil engineers.
If you want to talk about political possibility, I would recommend attacking it from a budgetary perspective. Pitch rail as big cost savings to the city and promote it as Cost-Neutral or pair it with some kind of tax cut. Voters love that shit. And it works particularly well in a state like Texas, where revenue is driven by property values rather than tax rates anyway. You can toss peanuts to the voters, by way of minor increases in the property tax deduction, while reaping massive windfalls when rail drives up density and more than makes up the difference in cuts as a consequence.
We already have proof-of-concept in this idea by way of the Houston Main Street line, an improvement that created a development boom all through Downtown and Midtown straight out to the NRG stadium and beyond. Property taxes soared while commute times plunged.
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Cheap land should theoretically make building transit easier. The fact that we continue to pave over old rail routes rather than building out rail on old shitty roads is purely a political decision.
Build trains over intercity highways? It's basically impossible with any American politician. A transformation like that would take ten years, but no American politician thinks further than two years ahead and literally won't be in office long enough to implement it.
Consider I-10. It was originally planned to support a rail corridor adjacent to the roadways. Ultimately, the plan was scrapped to build toll lanes where the rail line was supposed to go. An even more glaring example was the Westpark Tollway, which was built over the top of an old rail line that was originally intended to be the Blue Line commuter rail from West Houston into the Galleria Area.
Not only is rail around and through intercity highways possible, it is often the original intent of city planners and civil engineers.
If you want to talk about political possibility, I would recommend attacking it from a budgetary perspective. Pitch rail as big cost savings to the city and promote it as Cost-Neutral or pair it with some kind of tax cut. Voters love that shit. And it works particularly well in a state like Texas, where revenue is driven by property values rather than tax rates anyway. You can toss peanuts to the voters, by way of minor increases in the property tax deduction, while reaping massive windfalls when rail drives up density and more than makes up the difference in cuts as a consequence.
We already have proof-of-concept in this idea by way of the Houston Main Street line, an improvement that created a development boom all through Downtown and Midtown straight out to the NRG stadium and beyond. Property taxes soared while commute times plunged.