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The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

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Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#121

Post by [deleted] »

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #67
dashundchen wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the government is in a position of "we'll give you X for this, but if you don't agree we'll just take it from you", which is a... non-Texan position for government to be in, to say the least. Texas government doesn't seem to have that reservation when it comes to highway expansions within cities, that's for sure.

Good point. But highway expansions have localized benefits in ways trains don't. Everyone "knows" that another lane would fix everything on their daily commute, so amassing the political capital to make it happen isn't too hard. But a train to connect distant region X to distant region Y, by taking land from folks who hardly ever make that trip anyways? Harder sell.

[deleted]

Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#122

Post by basil-rash »

nickpp wrote: post #104
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions hold countries hostage by closing down rail or airports. Still, a solution that doesn't cost 1 billion dollars per person is always found. Sure. It's often found in the form of a court decision. > Imagine you offer them 2-10x market value. With a confidentiality clause. And the threat of confiscation or project abandonment. I believe an amiable solution would be found in most cases. Sure - in most cases. And…

> And for the ones that won't? Then you confiscate, sure. And show publicly that you offered 10x and were refused. But not confiscation by default, in all cases. I guess my argument is that if you really want something, you better pay up. Like for anything else, from cars and boats to 10x developers. What if the government could come to you whenever they want and say: I forcefully require your work and talent and I w…

The problem is who gets to determine the value of that land. If the government wants you to write software for them for a year, you can protest that you’re a 10x developer deserving millions of dollars all you want, all they need to do is look at your tax return for the last year and pay you double or whatever.

On the other hand, if your family has been living on that ranch and tending that land for hundreds of years, and every generation has contributed to building out and maintaining the homestead, the government can’t properly say “well that derelict lot down the way sold for 100k, we’ll give you 1M and call it fair”.

Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#123

Post by streb-lo »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #85
streb-lo wrote: post #54

Seems like a pretty vacuous article if “megaregions” are so poorly defined. Anyone who has ever driven between Spokane and Portland or Seattle knows it could hardly be considered “mega”.

I think the consensus is that the Portland-Seattle-Vancouver corridor is the "real" megaregion of the PNW. That corridor has ~10 million people and a high per capita GDP, especially the middle part which kind of ties it together. If you were going to include Spokane, it isn't that much of a stretch to include Boise as well.

Yea, that makes sense. I think you can conceivably define a megaregion to include places like the PNW corridor, the bay area, research triangle, etc. I'm just a bit baffled how Spokane and the region between makes the cut. Seems like the author just wanted to draw a bigger circle.

Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#124

Post by mulmen »

basil-rash wrote: post #120
mulmen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the Portland/Seattle train get priority over freight?

Probably not, but then why should it? Freight is a massive industry for port cities, not to mention the huge amount of downstream folks across the country that depend on them. A few folks being a bit later on their already-long journey is hardly too steep a price to pay for the continued efficiency of the rail network.

I think you lost track of the context. You claimed Portland/Seattle is an easy train in response to someone asking if it solves the problem of freight priorities.

I’m not here to debate transit philosophy.

Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#125

Post by mulmen »

NewJazz wrote: post #46
mulmen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the Portland/Seattle train get priority over freight?

Probably not, but light rail will get you around the Puget Sound pretty easy. https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/maps

Puget Sound is an enormous geographic region. Light rail doesn’t even serve most of Seattle’s needs (yet). There’s currently one line to the airport. The largest residential neighborhoods in the city aren’t even close. It’s not viable for “getting around” outside of very narrow cases. It’s a backbone for a system that is still being built.

Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#126

Post by dumbo-octopus »

mikepurvis wrote: post #101
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the steelman you envision?

That living in a society entails some costs but the nice things that come with it are on balance worth those costs? And just to be clear, different societies differ on where they put that marker. Canadians believe in free hospital visits but not (yet) in free drugs, dental, or vision care. Most westerners believe in free fire and police, free schools, and free roads to drive on. Some people are starting to experiment…

Nobody believes in "free" anything you say, they believe in the right of the government to tax all individuals in order to provide services to some (ok, some people might believe "free" hospitals are actually free, but they should hopefully be rare enough to ignore).

The question here is to what extent should the government be able to take other things (besides money) from individuals in order to provide other services to some. I believe it should be limited as much as possible, any many agree with me. It would seem Texans generally do too, as no politician has come to power on the promise of building a train from X to Y by any means possible. (Much to the chagrin of random internet commenters who have in all likelihood never traveled from X to Y in their life and never will).

Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#127

Post by saghm »

calstad wrote: post #28
saghm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://xkcd.com/1138/

Yep, this comic came to mind for me as well when I saw the map

Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#128

Post by seadan83 »

mulmen wrote: post #17
basil-rash wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LA/OxnardVentura/SanDiego is an easy train. As is Portland/Seattle.

Does the Portland/Seattle train get priority over freight?

No. Was on one while we were waiting for a freight train. Conductor even had a funny comment about how we were waiting for a priority Amazon prime packages train.

Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#129

Post by seadan83 »

bombcar wrote: post #9
laweijfmvo wrote: post #6

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.

Door to door metric is interesting. Bicycles actually shine there, you can save 5 to 20 minutes at every stop on your errand by parking directly in front of the store/destination rather than finding parking and walking in & back out. It's a really significant amount of time, speaks to how much is saved by cutting out unnecessary stops & going directly to your destination.

More so though, door-to-door is probably the most charitable metric for driving compared to trains. I presume door-to-door drive time is not assuming peak rush hour traffic?

Which is what makes the metric a bit weird: (A) makes odd assumptions about traffic conditions, (B) does not take into account that you can save time by being on a train - you can sleep, eat, do work, relax, pee when you want to, whatever.. If you drive door-to-door, all you will have done is likely just driven door to door. Less so with a train trip.

Re: The Texas Triangle: A rising megaregion unlike all others (2021)

#130

Post by basil-rash »

mulmen wrote: post #124
basil-rash wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not, but then why should it? Freight is a massive industry for port cities, not to mention the huge amount of downstream folks across the country that depend on them. A few folks being a bit later on their already-long journey is hardly too steep a price to pay for the continued efficiency of the rail network.

I think you lost track of the context. You claimed Portland/Seattle is an easy train in response to someone asking if it solves the problem of freight priorities. I’m not here to debate transit philosophy.

Train scheduling is not a simple binary “freight gets priority = problem, passengers get priority = no problem” matter. The GP referred to a specific implementation of a priority system in which passengers could be delayed for more than the base length of their trip, which presumably makes planning around taking the train quite difficult. This is the “problem” with it. Someone else asked if the other areas experience that problem. I said the Portland/Seattle and LA/SanDiego trains do not. That doesn’t mean they don’t have some variety of a prioritization scheme whereby freight often goes in front of passengers, it means they don’t experience the specific problem GP referred to whereby passengers can experience massive delays more than doubling the length of their trip. This in turn makes commenting via train in these areas comparatively “easy”.
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