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As someone who recently moved to the Texas triangle, I’m baffled by the lack of good transportation options between the three cities. It’s a 3-4 hour drive and while there is a train, freight gets priority. So the train takes anywhere from 3-7 hours. You can fly but with security any sort of delay and it would faster to drive.
other than maybe parts of the Northeast Corridor, do any of the othe "megaregions" solve that problem?
As someone who recently moved to the Texas triangle, I’m baffled by the lack of good transportation options between the three cities. It’s a 3-4 hour drive and while there is a train, freight gets priority. So the train takes anywhere from 3-7 hours. You can fly but with security any sort of delay and it would faster to drive.
A plan to connect Houston to Dallas with a bullet train has been grinding its way along for years now[0]. Since Texas is loath to use eminent domain, the planning phase has been stalled for a loooong time. [0]: https://www.texascentral.com/project/ Edit: Whoops, wrong project. Still, the plans are there, we just need willing politicians.
The people downvoting this have clearly never had government agents steal anything from them. Or believe that when they do, it’s always “for the greater good”.
Megaregions as a concept seems to make sense. Even as a resident of the aforementioned triangle, I'm not sure that we have much evidence for Texas exceptionalism here.
1. Distinctive set of demographic and economic realities
This is not a very compelling argument. Different places have different people. We should not be surprised by this observation.
2. Integrated economic system within a single state
Same article also cites other one-state megaregions like Florida, Southern California, Nortern California.
I never thought about it before - but seeing that chart of "Megaregions", almost none of my work travel within the US from the last 15 years has been outside of those regions.
As someone who recently moved to the Texas triangle, I’m baffled by the lack of good transportation options between the three cities. It’s a 3-4 hour drive and while there is a train, freight gets priority. So the train takes anywhere from 3-7 hours. You can fly but with security any sort of delay and it would faster to drive.
As someone who recently moved to the Texas triangle, I’m baffled by the lack of good transportation options between the three cities. It’s a 3-4 hour drive and while there is a train, freight gets priority. So the train takes anywhere from 3-7 hours. You can fly but with security any sort of delay and it would faster to drive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
other than maybe parts of the Northeast Corridor, do any of the othe "megaregions" solve that problem?
The San Diego - LA basin is moderately well covered, but the train is still slower than driving - most of the time. Unless you have exceptionally fast and direct rail, the train is almost always slower than driving, even in Europe, when counted door to door.
Similarly Marseille to Paris is only 3.5h by train while driving is almost 8h. It entirely depends on your source and destination. Between major economic hubs train is usually faster than driving, and as you can see by a significant amount. For other routes the train is similar or slightly slower.
In North America, on the other hand, the train is almost always MUCH MUCH slower than driving, if you can take it at all. Not to mention far more expensive.
I never thought about it before - but seeing that chart of "Megaregions", almost none of my work travel within the US from the last 15 years has been outside of those regions.
I feel like I'm missing some nuance, because it looks like it's basically just taking the largest population cities in the US and drawing circles around the ones near each other. "Most economic activity happens where the most people live" doesn't seem like a particularly novel insight.
As someone who recently moved to the Texas triangle, I’m baffled by the lack of good transportation options between the three cities. It’s a 3-4 hour drive and while there is a train, freight gets priority. So the train takes anywhere from 3-7 hours. You can fly but with security any sort of delay and it would faster to drive.
A plan to connect Houston to Dallas with a bullet train has been grinding its way along for years now[0]. Since Texas is loath to use eminent domain, the planning phase has been stalled for a loooong time. [0]: https://www.texascentral.com/project/ Edit: Whoops, wrong project. Still, the plans are there, we just need willing politicians.
Is this a state policy? It isn't necessarily a city one, see https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/fort-worth/article2... and related which I've seen pop up in the news at time for decades. "The City Council has authorized the use of eminent domain 29 times in the past two years, the most the city has used the land grabbing tactic since 2013."