President Joe Biden is reportedly seeking to revive a project that would construct a high-speed railway from Houston to Dallas in Texas utilizing Japanese bullet trains.
According to a Reuters report on Tuesday, citing unnamed administration sources, the White House is looking to make an announcement on the project following talks between Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington, D.C., this week.
The Japanese government and the White House declined to comment on the report, though the project has seen renewed support from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told KXAS in Fort Worth on Sunday: “We believe in this.”
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It’ll get canned as soon as Texans realize it’s not called a bullet train because of any involvement with guns.
Just make the station look like a giant gun
Spam a bunch of eagles, military memorabilia, guns, and US flags everywhere and they’ll be all over it. Bonus points if the whole train is eagle themed.
Ok, hear me out… Train station in the shape of a bald eagle with the covered track area leading out shaped like a gun penis for the eagle. The engine is shaped like a bullet, and the cars all have flames down the sides so it goes extra fast.
With Texas’ hardon against regulations I forsee this having a massive derailment within two decades of it opening.
Hope that isn’t the case, because we do need better mass transit.
Eh maybe. Usually the calls for deregulation are sponsored by the industry giants. So due to there not being a strong passenger rail lobby yet, I can see the regulation being fine. Once someone is trying to get rich then the derailments will start.
Texas conservatives are notoriously anti-regulation now, after decades of being paid to build that platform. There will be as few regulations as possible (with or without a lobby); that is a guarantee.
Texas signed up first because it has “bullet” in the title.
They think it’s gonna be fired from a giant gun.
To everyone outside if Texas: they’ve been talking about this for decades.
You know who will always find sneaky ways to sabotage it? The airlines.
Damn man, that engineer had a shitty day and probably some shitty pants after that one.
Man they’ve been trying to do this for years, but companies like Southwest lobby against it. Even Rick Perry was on board.
I would love to see it become a reality, but I’m skeptical.
Texas Monthly, 2015:
A Tale of Two Cities, a Bullet Train, and the Farmland in Between
Here’s a thought. Name your bullet train company like an oil company, call the bullet train the “oil pipeline”.
Each station can be named after gun or gun makers. Glock station, H&K transfer
Name them after famous 19th century American firearms inventors. Fuck all of them are now named after John Moses Browning.
Ya cool, but are Texans going to run it? They don’t exactly have a good track record when it comes to infrastructure. Maybe put it someplace, how do I put this… smarter?
I’d prefer some other state to get it than Texas. If Texas is going to deny federal money for unemployment and for healthcare, then Texas doesn’t deserve federal money for other good projects.
And this is coming from someone in Texas who would benefit from it.
Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott has told state employees to try to avoid federal money because it might come with strings that require treating non rich and non whites as human.
Remember when Greg Abbott had a tantrum and basically shut down the Texas-Mexico border to most road traffic and fucked over all the rest of the US who was depending on products to come from Mexico?
Let Texas feel what it would be like to secede.
At the same time HSR could encourage social lives and urban neighborhoods that would encourage less conservative thinking. I think if we get into petty partisanship, it will just continue to spiral until we have a second civil war.
until we have a second civil war.
Please, no more… I can only get so erect.
Conservatism is a fucking scourge. We need to finish the job this time.
Are you really arguing for armed conflict in the United States?
Edit: a word
I am not. But since conservatives have been champing at the bit for years to severely oppress or exterminate the normal people, and since they give the normal people no choice in the matter but to defend our existence, the threat needs to be proactively stopped to minimize the loss of life.
I didn’t decide to be their enemy. In fact, I have turned the other cheek and politely ignored their aggression and threats for decades. And still, conservatives have decided that normal people are their enemy, despite us just trying to live our lives peacefully.
Throughout history, conservatives have always oppressed and killed their nation’s most vulnerable, peaceful people. That’s just who conservatives are at their core. What we are seeing today is that same story playing out again. Unchecked conservatism is loudly warning the normal people that it is coming for us. And conservatives are acting on those threats.
So, seeing what fate awaits me, and being told by them for a lifetime that I am their enemy, there seems to be no choice but to embrace the fight to have a chance to survive.
Fuck conservatives. They are doing this. They insist that the quiet, peaceful, thoughtful, vulnerable, normal people are their enemy. They did this and they have earned any ounce of pain their fight causes them. I only hope the other normal people will stand up and resist them as well. The fight is already under way. Most are just pretending everything is going to be OK. That’s deadly complacency for rest of us. Action is needed. Now.
So… you are advocating for a civil war. Just one that “your side” wins completely, this time. As if that’s a real possibility.
What action are you referring to, that you want from normal people?
I’m not advocating for it. I’m anticipating what conservatives have been demanding since the last one. The action I refer to is whatever is necessary to stop the threat.
I am not speaking a mysterious language here. You are “just asking questions” in a bad faith effort to search for some kind of gotcha moment. If history is our guide, the widespread stochastic terrorism and lynchings that will be at the heart of this new war, if it happens, will come from the right, not the left.
Conservatism is a plague of oppression and death. It always has been. We either marginalize it now or experience the violence that comes from unchecked conservatism.
Ok, I’ll just say it: calling for any kind of civil war is fucking stupid. And you’re saying you’re hard for one. Fuck you first wanting to kill people, you weird person.
That’s all I’m saying, no gotcha moment, you did that to yourself in the first fucking post. I agree with you about reactionaries, they’re a scourge. But fuck you for wanting them dead wholesale, which is your obvious call.
You really think the side which worships guns and survival would lose to the side with empathy?
I’m terrified of a second civil war because I know it means not just my own death, but the death of rational thought in the US.
We won last time. We didn’t finish the job, so they have been working toward a rematch ever since.
Yes they have. And we haven’t.
Both sides of the last one thought it would be over in one battle, and both sides believe the same thing again. I have terrible news how the first one went for both sides.
While I agree that Texas is not the most “deserving,” if it gets rapidly improving infrastructure it will probably at least flip into a swing state, with more liberals than fascists. “Punishing” them just lets them play victim.
I wish they were more than playing sometimes. If they’re going to claim persecution then we should persecute them a little.
is accelerationism everywhere now? just let a single good thing happen geez
The California one is an idiotic waste of money ever since they made it jog inland to appease local lawmakers instead of doing a straight shot between SoCal and NorCal.
Hope Texas gets it right and proves that high-speed electric rail makes sense and is sustainable.
Wait, who am I kidding. They may well insist it should run on pure Texas Raw Crude.
They’re gonna be real pissed when they find out somebody used the word bullet to dupe them into building public transport.
Had to lol at this. Too true. Whaddaya ya mean there’s no shootin’ on this train?!
I’m so fucking skeptical of this happening though. I hope it does get through.
Gregg Abbott in a few weeks: “Trains?! Sounds like trans… No thanks, Biden!”
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-bullet-train-abbott/
This fall (December 3, 2020), the project received approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration, and Governor Greg Abbott wrote a letter to the Japanese government, a key investor in the project, voicing his support. The potential benefits of the rail seemed manifold. It would offer travelers a ninety-minute alternative to the four-hour drive between Dallas and Houston and relieve highway congestion that’s projected to double by 2035. It would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it would create thousands of high-paying jobs at a time when Texas is suffering from both a pandemic-related recession and an oil-price bust.
“The Texas High-Speed Train will be the first truly high-speed train in Texas and the United States, connecting North Texas, Houston and the Brazos Valley in less than 90 minutes, using the safest, most accessible, most efficient and environmentally friendly mass transportation system in the world today,” Texas Central spokesperson Erin Ragsdale wrote in a statement.
Abbott’s letter, however, sparked a firestorm among some of his longtime supporters. Even before the governor expressed support for the rail project, Meier said, her circle of friends had become increasingly wary of him because they believed he was pandering to liberal interests by imposing restrictions on some businesses during the early days of the pandemic. “I was the only one I know of that was still basically supporting him,” Meier said. “If he continues to support the [train], he will not get my vote, and I will passionately spread the word.”
Four days after Abbott penned his letter, his staff walked back his support, telling the Dallas Morning News that the governor intended to reevaluate his position out of concern for Texans’ property rights and because he was provided with “incomplete” information about the project.
Dude has been all over the map, chasing whichever way popular opinion has been blowing.
The only thing certain about conservatives is they will always make the worst possible choice. Always.
It could be that transforming the land value of an couple of abandoned malls into a hot property for developers will ultimately win Abbott over. There’s a lot of money that Texas routinely leaves on the table for ideological reasons, and as the domestic market cools off we’re seeing more push back from the business wing of the party to do real actual infrastructure projects rather than just squeezing rents out of the existing stock.
I could see that. Although, I do wonder when the party will be too far gone for the corporate billionaires to have any control left.
If you consider folks like Musk and Gates to be the modern corporate Pied Pipers, I might argue that it’s their increased control that’s driving people crazy
Meanwhile, China has over 30,000 high-speed rail lines.
But do they have a massive fossil fuel industry to prop up?!
yeah but how many of them are bullet trains?
The correct numbers are 159,000km of rail lines, with 5,500 commuter stations. 45,000km of those rail lines support HSR (bullet trains), serving 980 stations with 76 different HSR lines.
China has 76 High-Speed Rail lines…
Surely you mean km, and the current number is 45,000km across 990 stations.
I think you mean 30 million high speed rail lines
Time for Elon Musk to create a new vapour-ware like the boring tunnel to stop mass transplantation that will compete with his electric car empire
Texas figured it out?
Texas?
Yeah, this is a real low point. This one hurts.
So I mentioned the odd dichotomy that Texas has in another post
Hey, trust me, I know how this shit goes. I’m in Kansas.
Biden shouldn’t be doing shit for Texas. He should try push this mainstream across the country. But Texas wants to secede Abbott probably find away to make this not happen anyway and funds will be stolen and wasted.
Umm. Not really, it’s because Amtrak is involved now in Texas and the Build Back Better Act has sent money for several projects not just Houston to Dallas. CaliHSR, Las Vegas to LAX, Orlando to Tampa, Seatle-Tahcoma-Portland, and Atlanta to Charlotte all got funds. All these projects (with the exception of Cali) are using federal/private funds, so state governors can’t really pull the plug.
No one else got your Good Place reference so I just wanted to say, have some frozen yoghurt.
Maybe it’s a diesel bullet train and they’re “running coal”?
They had to use > bullet> train to get them onboard.
so you just shoot the train? I gotta see this gun!
Is this likely to be built before CAHSR and Brightline West?
Was watching Hollywood screenwriters make fun of CAHSR back in 2014, during the second season of True Detective. Ten years later and still nothin’.
They built some pretty large viaducts a few years ago.
jazz hands
