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by citizenpaul 164 days ago
You should check Austin TX where they tried to do the same thing, but only built one rail.... So yea you have to wait like over an hour just for arrival if the train is at the other end. For what should be a 15 min ride because literally only one train can go back and forth. The train drivers sometime stop the train to get food at in-n-out burger too, seriously.

Its one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, a testament to inefficient bureaucracy. I'm not sure anyone uses it.
2 comments
jyounker 163 days ago
Remember that Texas cities are having to actively fight with their own state and national level representatives, not to mention economic interests. It's not a "bureaucratic inefficiency" as much as it is active sabotage. That cities in Texas manage to get any public transit built is a miracle.
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kentonv 164 days ago
That's a bit of an exaggeration. A quick look at the schedule shows they do have multiple trains running in each direction during peak hours:

https://www.capmetro.org/plan/schedmap?route=550

But much of the length is, in fact, single-track, making scheduling hard and meaning if a train is late or breaks down it disrupts the whole system.

And it's honestly pretty silly to see a train with the form factor of light rail but diesel-powered.

Voters did approve a proper light rail system in 2020 but it's gonna take a while to build and has already been scaled back twice, sigh...

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citizenpaul 163 days ago
What I wrote is accurate. You are referring to a line that goes out of the city to elgin, a tiny town, that is the only part with two tracks. The part that serves the Austin area has only one line and is as I described. Hey what do I know I just lived next to it for 4 years, and drove to work even though I could walk to the train because of how terrible it is and would add 1-2hrs to my commmute.
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kentonv 163 days ago
Err... well... I live in Austin currently.

I'm describing the red line which goes from downtown to Leander. (The one I linked to.) If you're describing some other line then sorry for the confusion, I didn't actually know there was another rail line. There are plans to build a green line to Elgin but AFAIK that's still under construction.

The red line is mostly single-track, but there are several specific segments of dual-track allowing trains to pass each other, which is why they're able to support multiple trains in both directions.

It's still a crappy schedule -- even during rush hour it's still no more than two trains an hour. Supposedly they intend to start running it every 15 minutes once they add some more dual-track segments.

Maybe it was worse when you lived here?

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