The Austin to San Antonio Inter-Municipal Rail District was created in the mid 1990s to promote the implementation of passenger rail service between Georgetown, Texas and San Antonio, Texas. It is known as the ASA.
Congestion on I-35 argues for steps to relieve it, especially during the morning and evening rush hours in Austin and San Antonio as well as between the Capital and Alamo cities. A toll road was opened last year to route traffic around Austin. It is part of the solution, but clearly more needs to be done.
The District, which includes the communities along the Union Pacific Line from Round Rock to San Antonio, plus Georgetown, has commissioned a series of studies to determine the feasibility of establishing commuter rail serve between Georgetown, which is 30 miles north of Austin, and San Antonio via Austin.
The studies have identified a major stumbling block to the implementation of the ASA. Congestion on the Union Pacific! The answer to the problem on the UP, which must be dealt with if the passenger rail version is to become a reality, according to Texas transport planners, is to build a new by-pass rail line around Austin to connect with the Sunset route east of San Antonio.
Last week the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and the UP released their estimates of the cost to relocate the UP line. It is $2.4 billion or approximately $16.5 million a mile. In addition, another $600 million would be required for track, signal, and station upgrades to handle commuter rail service on the existing line between Georgetown and San Antonio. And it would cost approximately $41 million a year to operate the commuter rail service.
TxDOT and UP estimated that the investment would produce benefits totaling $1.4 billion over 20 years, although the quantification of the benefits required estimates that are based on shaky assumptions. For example, the authors of the study estimated that motorists would benefit by reducing their wait time at existing rail crossings. Finding good numbers for this type of estimate is problematic.
Commuter rail and light rail makes sense when existing or abandoned railway rights-of-way can be upgraded to accommodate it. But as this study shows, starting from scratch is expensive, unless one believes that a $1.4 billion return over 20 years on an investment of approximately $3 billion is a sound financial strategy.
Meanwhile, TxDOT has partnered with Amtrak to study the feasibility of providing additional intercity passenger rail service between Round Rock and San Antonio on the existing UP route. Given the congestion on the route, I don't see how they can pull it off, but hopefully they will figure out a way to do it. The one place where passenger rail makes sense is in relatively short, high density corridors. ASA is not there yet, but it is getting close.
Sa
Good potential. I don't have all of the info in front of me, but to relieve the current congestion would it not be much faster and more cost effective to simply add another track to the current UP line instead of building a bypass line? Is it currently single or double track?
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AntonioFP45 wrote: Sa Good potential. I don't have all of the info in front of me, but to relieve the current congestion would it not be much faster and more cost effective to simply add another track to the current UP line instead of building a bypass line? Is it currently single or double track?
Expanding the current line, especially through Austin, would be very expensive. The line threads the MoPac (Route 1) north of downtown Austin, snakes through town, and crosses the Colorado River on a fairly long single track bridge.
The line runs in a median between the south bound and north bound lanes of the MoPac as per above. The median does not appear wide enough to accommodate another track. To double track the line would require not only a rebuild of the railroad but the parallel lanes of highway. It would require the rebuild of numerous highway bridges.
I don't have the numbers, but my guess is that doubling tracking the existing line would be more costly than to build the bypass. In fact, I have never seen or heard a serious discussion to double track the current route.
I agree with Samantha.
In my mind, th MOP line is a relatively slow,line, with limited capacity between Round Rock and say, Buda. Missouri Pacific did have operational solutions, here, in the past, as there was a passing siding at Austin, and the current main track was in fact the siding, while the "house track" was the main at one time. This alignment could be easily restored, or something similar, to increase capacity.
Sneed siding and Round Rock are the only two sidings. A siding at McNeil might be a possiblity, but the real question for me is how trains are supposed to get to Georgetown. I presume someone is thinking about the GRR, but the DX2 lead meets the UP main at RoundRock and is a facing point switch toward Taylor, making any kind of efficient move virtually impossible.
Relocation was supposed to be included in the Route 130 bypass, if I remember. What happened to that?
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