this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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The main problem with the train would be that once you get to those cities, they are massive, sprawling, and lack good public transit.
So hopefully they improve the transit situation in the cities & surrounding areas as well.
The Train got cancelled the other week by Texas govt.
Oh, I knew the feds had cancelled grant money to it, I didn't know the state killed it. I know they're all in the pocket of big oil, but it's just wild to me how trains are apparently woke.
They are woke because they have potential to improve lives regardless of class, race, or gender. Obviously they should have to "earn" those improvements by buying a car instead.
Quite literally this is why a lot of public transit got cancelled and destroyed - it made it easier for "those people" to come to the wealthier white parts of the city. In my city they literally built an interstate straight through downtown to make it harder for the large black population here to get out of the traditionally-black parts of the city.
I keep recommending The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. In the book, he documents how the modern suburb was created through zoning in order to keep Black people out by making living there too expensive, both through the land cost and the car needed to navigate it. It's really crazy just how open and deliberate it was!
Well that sucks
At least in Houston, the transit isn't horrible if you stay in the inner loop. They gave a few rail lines and the buses run frequently there, so it's probably fine in theory. But if you have to leave the inner core...
The main problem with the train would be that once you get to those cities, they are massive, sprawling, and lack good public transit.
We can't build mass transit because then we might need to build more mass transit.
Also, it would be entirely impossible to expand local mass transit after the intrastate rail broke ground but before it was finished. Couldn't be done. But we somehow can completely rewire I-45 to facilitate more interstate trucking.
Well, you've got to start somewhere. CAHSR has been the impetus for a lot of sprawled out central valley cities to get their shit together. Fresno is probably the prime example of this. We're trying to drag Merced into getting its shit together, though kicking and screaming it may be.
Just nuke Texas off the face of the earth
both dallas and houston have somewhat okay rail networks though
I think you Death Noted them, because HB 3187 made it through the House Transportation Committee an hour or two after you posted this comment. It would effectively kill DART (a ~30% service reduction).
well at least my distain for america is validated i guess
(Seriously tho those wide urban highways split up a city as much as a river does. It looks like the Hudson in NYC with those massive bridges).
I'm too lazy to do that, but maps of Texan cities where their highways were edited to water bodies would really prove this point.
Displacing minorities is a feature. Otherwise Those People might build up generational wealth, and eventually start considering themselves white people’s equals. POSIWID.
TIL a new acronym, but one doesn't need to infer the purpose of the system from what it does. The designers of the system said out loud that segregation was a feature. They gave speeches and wrote memos about it.
But hear me out, what if the train was powered by coal and suffering?
I'm here trying to figure out if you mean that the train is powered by suffering and coal, or if you mean the train is suffering, and it is powered by coal.
I'm probably focusing on the wrong thing, but it feels important.
Land is more important than people. That’s why Wyoming gets the same number of senators as California.
See, what happened is Texas heard something about bullets and got a bit ahead of itself.
Steal stolen land, you mean.
Steal land. Sell it. Let the locals improve it. Steal it again. Sell it. Let the locals improve it. If anyone complains, tell them that you shouldn't care about the latest set of owners because they bought it off you when you stole it from the last set of owners.
Don't ask who profits. It's definitely not six families who showed up wealthy and have only ever been getting richer for the last century.
If it was a new interstate or an extra lane on the Katy freeway, nobody would be saying shit. My favorite example is how there's in interstate project in the northeast that's pretty much as overbudget as CAHSR and basically nobody is talking shit about it.
what, railway? no no, this is a superhighway for coupled-car vehicles!
I don’t know that that’s an “average Texan,” I think that’s more “average massively wealthy landholding Texan.”
Certainly is average Texan voter. They vote for this.
(Although they’ve mostly been indoctrinated from a young age so the blame is more on the corpocratic state elite than the population).
I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35 I hate i 35
Racism mostly...
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