Originally Posted by
Harhir
I know Europe is smaller and I understand that it is difficult to add in mass transport in existing dense development. But here in the DFW area most developments are only 20 - 30 years old. Some of the northern cities grew from like 100K population to 200K in less than 10 years. There is not much old development which would hinder mass transportation. And they are still expanding like crazy and building acres of brand new suburbs from scratch on what was farmland before. There would be great opportunities to come up with great alternative transportation solutions when you start from scratch. But this just does not happen.
Another issue is that even though the US isn't nearly as old as Europe, it hasn't been blown to smithereens and rebuilt in the last 100 years- as young as it is, the US still has a fair number of buildings that are considered 'historic' and can't be moved or destroyed. Some cities are so overbuilt that building a light or high speed rail system could only happen if they put it outside and use some other system to bring people into the center which might not be a bad idea.
Is there some kind of rail system in that stretch that goes to DFW, near Grapevine? I haven't been there since 2001 and would imagine it has changed a lot since then. I was also there New Year's Eve 1999 and stayed less than a mile from the Dunham's Sporting Goods store where the escaped convicts killed the security guard- that sucked. It was good to see that they were caught.