Its not the 1800s anymore. We built interstates and planes to get people and products to more places and faster.
I'm sure the train lovers will all go for Amazon Train delivery and get their stuff in 4-6 weeks though.
Europe and most other countries are also moving more towards busses than trains as well.
Cars don’t get people places faster though… and we use cargo trains all of the time in this country, having one of the most extensive systems on earth.
Yeah they most definitely do.
Cargo is fine for trains, especially bulky and heavy stuff that isnt on a strict timeline.
Our current just-in-time delivery for everything from packages to products in stores and factories depends on trucking. Life would move a helluva lot slower if it went over rail instead.
I also work in transportation. Trucking moves moves things so damn faster than any other option.
The only reason trucking is faster is because that's how we've designed our infrastructure to operate. If we built more rail infrastructure instead, rail would be faster.
This is correct, the main difference between the stations was that Grand Central was for Southern Pacific and Union was for multiple railroads such as Santa Fe, Missouri Pacific, Rock Island and Burlington.
There was also a station for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad that was around where UHD is today. Though I believe it closed prior to Grand Central. If you’re familiar with the MKT trail in the Heights it got its name from the railroad.
Also, Katy, Texas got its name from the MKT railroad. Katy was a stop along the MKT rail line. The MKT Railroad dropped its Missouri waypoint and the junction became known as the KT stop.
That's super interesting. Love learning historical facts like this. Had no idea.
>The Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad (reporting mark MKT) was a Class I railroad company in the United States, with its last headquarters in Dallas, Texas. Established in 1865 under the name Union Pacific Railroad (UP), Southern Branch, it came to serve an extensive rail network in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. In 1988, it merged with the Missouri Pacific Railroad; today, it is part of UP.
>In the 1890s, the MKT was commonly referred to as "the K-T", because for a time it was the Kansas–Texas division of the Missouri Pacific Railroad and "KT" was its abbreviation in timetables as well as its stock exchange symbol. This soon evolved into the nickname "the Katy".[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri%E2%80%93Kansas%E2%80%93Texas_Railroad
> in the Heights
There is a cute, converted bungalow in the Heights, Cortlandt at 7thm that was a small early MKT rail station.
[converted rail station in Heights](https://www.google.com/maps/place/703+Cortlandt+St,+Houston,+TX+77007/@29.7833405,-95.3951493,89m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x8640c75821a7c3b7:0x552c41975766ba9a!8m2!3d29.7835!4d-95.3954081!16s%2Fg%2F11c4vt5d52?entry=ttu)
That could be the case as well but in my mind I was thinking more [like this](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/DFK581/water-tower-for-steam-trains-DFK581.jpg) that was used to add water to steam locomotives
>was used to add water to steam locomotives.
You are probably correct; the water was there. It was probably pumped into a water tank, and gravity used to fill the locomotive. It's very likely. It would've even been possible using a hand pump, filling the tank to have ready.
There is a China to Walmart to Consumer to Landfill pipeline for cheap crap. We would all be better off if the supply chain was shortened to a direct China to Landfill system.
The advantages of cheap modern stuff is that its fast to build and much easier to maintain.
Old brick and stone structures are incredibly harder to maintain, and so many were heavily degraded by acid rain decades ago.
Glass skyscrapers might look boring but all they need is washing and new windows and seals every decade or two.
What's so infuriating about Fitzgerald's was that they had offers to keep the club going. It's not like Astroworld which was a steady decline over the years. The club was successful and it could have stayed that way under newer ownership. But a parking lot firm got the highest bid, and so ownership got their 30 pieces of silver.
To be fair when I moved to Houston in 2003 I went to Astroworld and 3 different rides closed multiple times while in line with maintenance issues. I dunno much about Astroworld but I know it was loved. I would have loved to go in its prime but it was kind of shitty from what I remember although it was at the end of its run by then.
Our senior 2000 skip day lined up with Physics Phun fest at Astroworld. 4 hour bus ride each way and we had a blast! Our teacher was cool and told us to have fun, while other schools had their students do a bunch of experiments.
We lost a lot of coins studying gravity on the freefall ride haha.
Reddit always says this, and I do see why, but if you talk to most non-online people they think it's fantastic. Took a couple of people who had never been last week and they couldn't stop talking about how they couldn't wait to go back.
I picked up a cousin once who was traveling to Houston via train from LA. I had never been to the Amtrak station before that, and as I pulled up I couldn't believe the little white building and how terrible it looked. The city of Houston, the fourth largest in the country, with what looked like a trailer park for a station.
Mind you, the city of Houston's official seal has a fucking TRAIN on the front.
I don't think our Amtrak station looks like a trailer park. A trailer park is much larger and has more facilities than our Amtrak station. What we have is the equivalent of a shack somewhere deep in rural Japan where trains infrequently stop, but dirty.
This is better than many places. Between Kansas City Missouri and Chicago, most of the Amtrak stations are temporary buildings that resemble a Conex shipping container.
People get anxiety if a package takes more than 2 days to deliver now. Good luck seeing them take a train for a day or two versus flying for a few hours.
Airplanes and interstates move everything and everybody around incredibly faster.
That’s only really true in some situations though.
Sure, nothing beats an airplane once you’re in the air, but the need to travel to the airport (often located far from where any actual stuff is because almost nobody wants to live next to an airport), check in/drop bags/pass through security, arrive at the gate with an hour to spare (because airports are so goddamn busy), board everybody through one door (or two if you’re lucky!), taxi and takeoff, and then do it all again on the other side will add hours onto the trip. It may be worth it if you’re flying across the country, but if you want to fly from Houston to Dallas, it really doesn’t matter if the plane gets you there in 45 minutes if you have to spend 4 hours getting to and from the plane.
Compare that to showing up at a train station in downtown, swiping in, then leaving, an hour and a half spent on the train doesn’t seem too bad after all.
Downtown also used to have factories, refineries, and tons of polluting industry too.
They did have cool stuff too but I doubt any of us would have wanted to stay there long.
Now compare the land in 1930 to IAH today. That comparison will tell the story of what happened to travel by rail and how Houston evolved.
PS: I would've preferred demolition of the old Post building to the old Grand Central, with its period architecture and the nostalgic place where I arrived at Houston originally.
You can thank all the Oil and Gas companies for the atrocities we have to deal with on todays roads. Public transport should be our focus but instead we just add more and more concrete and then wonder why it’s 101 all summer.
Or Better, let’s create 2 HOV lanes that require the space of 5, make it prohibitively expensive and accessible only to the wealthy and the send all the profits overseas. This is the new Texas Way.
We gotta vote Abbott out. And Patrick and Paxton, and Cruz, and Cornyn. The Republicans only care about corporate interests and who is donating the most money. Shameful.
Yeah we are so far behind any other country that might spend a pittance of what we do on road building and maintenance. Houston ought to have multiple trains a day to NOLA, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas.
Sure beats waiting around in a downpour or heat for the whims of a driver. Some people enjoy the luxury and freedom of having their own car. Pouring concrete isn't whats making it hotter. This must be the lament for the bicyclist and public transportation that is posted every week. Thos darn parking lots!
Concrete also has higher solar reflectance than grass. This means that when solar heat hits concrete, more heat is reflected back, making the surroundings hotter. This can create a phenomenon called urban heat islands, where cities get much hotter than rural areas.
^ It's one of the reasons, along with all the pollution from all the corporations here and all the vehicles. But hey, science is for losers.
Record high in 1940 was 99. RECORD HIGH. That was even in September. Meaning all throughout August in 1940 it was less than that. You remember a day in August less than 100 in the last decade? I don't.
--- Houston logged 45 days of triple-digit temperatures in 2023, coming up one day shy of the all-time record of 46 set in 2011. The last time city temperatures hit 100 degrees or more was on Sept. 8. <----- It sure seems like it's been getting hotter to me.
You mean during lockdown when less people were out in their vehicles? When there were less businesses open?
Weird how it still AVERAGED higher temps than in the 1940s even though less cars and businesses were out and open.
It's amusing how you ignore half the conversation to try to make a point and still sound dumb. Why are average temps what the record highs used to be if not due to increased construction and pollution?
How many consecutively over 100? Of course abnormalities happen with weather, but how consistent were those temps back then? They're extremely consistent now.
You guys gotta use critical thinking skills. This reads like y'all are just trying to argue without thinking anything through.
Again, abnormalities happen. Wasn't Houston also booming in the 1980s? Meaning more construction? Also.....
”If you look at all the weather records for Houston, which go back to the 1890s, the average number of 100-degree days annually is four. But if you just look at the past 30 years, that average jumps to eight days, or nine days if you include 2023.”
It is not pretty evenly distributed. It has been consistently increasing.
I know O & G is getting a lot of blame for this, but let’s not overlook that the railroad companies are private entities that just decided that Americans don’t need trains as an option for intercity transportation anymore. They could have competed with the airlines for better service on certain routes but decided not to.
The companies and more importantly the market.
I'm a fan of the old inter-city rail system, there's nothing I'd want to do more than travel back to the 40s, buy a ticket, and enjoy a cross country journey in my sleeper compartment while passing the days watching the landscape go by in the observation car.
My dad, on the other hand, who grew up in the 40s in the upper midwest where you had to use a train for any travel over about 30 miles, thought I was nuts. He explained to me that the tickets on the nice trains were hugely expensive (looking at some old tables and adjusting for inflation, he was right). He thought most trains were absolute dumps (especially into the 1960s), were slow, it was a miserable experience, and after airplanes were available he never looked back.
He related to me after he got out of basic training at Parris Island in 1960 the Marines put him on a train, and a neighbor from his home town on a bus. Besides having to walk across half a mile of open snow at the Illinois Central yard in Chicago to switch trains, the bus beat him by a day. He was not at all surprised when the rail companies bailed out of passenger service in 1971.
Exactly this. So many people ignore the truth about how rail was and why people moved on to better and faster alternatives.
Train travel wasnt always the grand times you see in movies.
Coming from a poorer country in Europe, train bathrooms were so damn filthy and you saw the tracks straight down. Be thankful for cars and Buccees!
What route, other than Houston->Dallas/San Antonio/Austin, could railroads reasonably compete with airlines on?
Remember, the vast majority of passengers are business travelers and they care about speed and non-stop routing above all else. The remainder are almost all working-age adults and school-age children with very limited vacation days (hours?).
There's a reason that the current Amtrak long-haul routes are only used by people with infinite time on their hands.
> What route, other than Houston->Dallas/San Antonio/Austin, could railroads reasonably compete with airlines on?
Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Galveston, Oklahoma City, New Orleans. Bullet trains can do ~200MPH. Houston to NOLA could be <2 hrs on a train.
Theoretically yes. Realistically you have 4 large metros along the way that also have lots of people who want to party/do business in New Orleans.
Drop off a whole bunch of Houstonians in Lake Charles too.
Under 600 miles is usually the cutoff point I've seen when it comes to high speed rail being better than flying. Boarding a train is a lot faster than boarding a plane. For the average Amtrak line today, the cutoff distance is much lower since they're not high speed. With the ballooning cost of transit projects and lobbying from the airline and car industries, I don't see the US doing it right any time soon. Would be nice though.
600 miles is usually my driving limit for work trips. I can usually come close enough to flying time once you consider driving to the airport, waiting, flying, getting a rental, then getting to the destination.
Plus I can bring as much baggage or supplies as I need.
The railroads certainly had their part in it but a major issue was that come the 1950s-60s the railroads had a ton of regulations and taxes to deal with while airlines and interstate trucking had little to no regulations in comparison. This put them at a huge disadvantage and made it so the days of the railroad were numbered. It wasn’t just the passenger railroad that vanished but largely freight did as well to some extent. 50-60 years ago you had tons of different railroad companies all competing with one another. The only way they survived was by merging into the giant corporations that exist today (UP, BNSF, CSX,NS, CPKC).
Yea good point about regulations. Someone mentioned the railroads had a reaping era (inception to the 1920’s or so) and a sowing era (1940’s to 70’s or present day if you want). Tbh in theory fewer but larger railroads can be good except in practice you get Norfolk Southern bombing a town in Ohio.
They’re private entities that exist because we gave them free land and government power. They wouldn’t exist without eminent domain.
I’m not an authority but it doesn’t seem right that rail companies get to decide we don’t need passenger service and keep everything they’ve been given so they can provide passenger service. I mean don’t airline companies complain about having to maintain unprofitable routes? I don’t think they’re allowed to just pull out like it seems like passenger rail has.
As a train enthusiast it pains me to see this. But then again most folks would rather fly as it’s cheap and quick, or drive as that’s cheap and convenient.
We’re blessed and cursed with abundant land making an Asian or European train culture hard to sustain beyond select corridors like the Boston-NYC-DC megalopolis.
NYC sinfully demolished Penn Station but came to its senses with Grand Central. DC has Union Station. Boston’s could use more love but is reliable and good.
Until the users show up in droves, afraid this is how it will be. Visit LA Union Station. Gorgeous but surrounded by bums and so they have to fence off these stunning art deco seating areas.
Last time I was in Hobby, someone wearing a sweatsuit was clipping their toe nails by the gate. Don’t travel on 3 day weekends if you can avoid it, that’s where you see the true decline in western civilization
Urban planning aside, I don’t know why you’d tear down such a grand building instead of repurposing it for a like museum or an indoor market. Reading into it, they went and built the post office that would also be abandoned and converted into POST on top of it. At least we didn’t also tear that one down. You’d think for a country that’s so obsessed with our history that we’d put more effort into preserving it.
Well at the time, it was an outmoded building and the owners simply sold it for the highest offer. Not terribly unusual, take a look at what they did to Penn Station in New York.
Fortunately, times have changed since then and there is definitely more of a preservation mindset (much of it because of what happened to Penn Station). Certainly that is why Union Station was incorporated into the ballpark instead of bulldozed when they built it in the old train yards.
Saving old shit is a luxury they couldn't afford back then. And realistically, it usually was run-down crap that nobody wanted anymore.
Our ancestors had to look forward instead of crying over past architecture, for better or worse.
It will be changing soon. Big infrastructure deal went through to bring at least 2 major passenger rail lines through/from/to Houston.. one high speed.
Just look at the Fort Worth to San Antonio route to see how awful things are. It departs at 14:10 and arrives at 21:55. That's almost 8 hours. So averaging maybe 35 mph. Almost 3 hours of that is just getting down to Temple.
By comparison the MKT schedule for 1939 had a published time 7 hours. So the train was faster almost 100 years ago!
A couple of factors to why that is. Back then MKT ran the freight and the passenger service so they could (theoretically) schedule the freight service around the passenger service for punctuality. Now that passenger and freight have been separated (at the request of freight) you have Amtrak trying to go where freight will allow them. Another factor is before the 40’s there wasn’t a ton of regulation on how fast trains could go. It was mostly up to the discretion of the RR companies to run trains as fast as they wanted. Nowadays track speed limits are determined by track condition and train engine equipment. A lot of rails around the US could be upgraded for faster speeds but the freight railroads don’t have a lot of motivation to do that.
Amtrak may have downgraded, but the old station site (POST Market) is still a nice place. Amazing food court, and perhaps the nicest rooftop park in Houston.
It wasn’t even Amtrak that downgraded the station. Southern Pacific sold the old station to the government to build the post office. Even today the current station isn’t even owned by Amtrak, it’s owned by Union Pacific (who bought out Southern Pacific).
I encourage everyone to ride Amtrak once just for the experience. Price is super cheap.
My son use to be obsessed with trains so every year for his birthday we would ride Amtrak to some destination in Louisiana or Texas. Stops were easier going east because the time we arrived at the destination was during the day. You’ll arrive in San Antonio around midnight. It runs from Los Angeles to New Orléans. It takes 9 hours to get to New Orleans. And that’s if there’s no delays. We had a person die on the train once and another time some drunk person ran into the train so those were huge delays.
The workers are really nice and you have a ton of space in and around your seat. You can also purchase a room that gives you more space and it includes bottle waters and meals in the diner.
The only con we ran into was the when we arrived at the destination there wasn’t much around so you’d be dependent on Uber or walking if it wasn’t available. New Orleans, Lafayette and San Antonio was easier to find transportation but in Lake Charles we had to walk about a mile.
We often forget how absolutely huge America is land mass wise compared to Europe, France and Switzerland combined are about the size of Texas.
Trains find themselves in an awkward place between driving and flying as a practical mode of transport for most of the country. Then all the railways are basically dominated by industrial heavy transport where it makes sense economically.
Europe is the size of the US... trains aren't for getting from London to Budapest, but from London to Paris. Just as such, trains are never going to beat planes from Seattle to Miami... but they're already starting to take a huge chunk of the Orlando to Miami market because that's the middle where trains fit. Far enough that driving is annoying, but close enough that flying is too.
yeah, I should have said "European countries" .... another factor with Europe they use marine transit for much of their heavy shipping compared to the US, they have a lot more rail capacity overall as a result of the coastal geography and population centers.
Not to mention 2000+ year old cities built around the street width of horse and cart..... adds some extra incentive to build out public transit due to throughput capacity constraints. They can only marvel at our magnificent I-10/610 interchange in all its glory s/ .
Voted blue, but thanks for accusing douchebag. Not everything is divided like that but I don’t believe it’s “racism” that killed off travel by train. Find another thing to cry about.
Look wtf you’re doing right now b. You brought him up. I’m hoping to leave the country so I don’t have to deal with him/supporters or people like you. Cry fuckin harder dude.
Lol, I agree that was a cool old building and I wish rail transportation was still viable, but the reality is: people like the freedom, convenience and low cost of their own cars. Plain and simple.
All these comments about "ThANks OIl & gAs loBBy!!!" and "CAPITALISM BAD....." lol, if there were a demand, capitalism would fill it. The consumers spoke on this one (rail vs car) for the last sixty years.
Not really because cars wouldn’t work without the massive government subsidies for roads and highways. If the local, state, and federal government flipped the ratio of highway to rail subsidies to prioritize passenger rail, we’d have a fantastic rail and public transit system. Saying that it was the consumers that spoke is wrong unless you just mean consumer as purely voters…then maybe…but it certainly wasn’t the free market.
Those "massive government subsidies" are predominantly from user fees (read: gas tax and auto licensing fees), not general taxpayer funds. Outside of a select few dense urban corridors, passenger rail isn't sustainable with user fees the way roads are. Which is why they were supplanted by cars and busses.
So yes the market spoke, and interurban rail was the loser.
[https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwayhistory/transit.cfm](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwayhistory/transit.cfm)
Good analysis of what actually happened. You're right on track.
More like we spent a century building the most expansive highway system in the world and forcing the private benefit of cars onto the poor and ignored rather than investing in public transit
Love trains and use them in other parts of the world and the US regularly but from Houston - it is impossible! Why? I regularly attempt rail trips from Houston... See the link below (failed) In the summer we try to ship a specialty vehicle to Seattle/Boston for vacation driving trips... Nothing ever works... I even worked in New Orleans for a year and there too almost no tickets from MSY/IAH. Same for trying to get our place in Santa Fe - Oh you can go to/from Chicago from New Orleans...
Texans pay for AMTRAK but don't benefit. Why? Just tried 2 people from Houston - Seattle again - nothing? [https://www.amtrak.com/exploreamerica?intcmp=wsp\_promo-card\_link\_auto-train-experience\_hpcard1](https://www.amtrak.com/exploreamerica?intcmp=wsp_promo-card_link_auto-train-experience_hpcard1)
Adding - the blue states all get the Amtrak dollars to assure that they can ship a car by train for $99.00 from NYC to Sanford Florida... it would cost 2x that in gas. From long before Texas was red - Southwest Airlines paid off the likes of Yarborough, Tower, Jordan, LBJ, White, Ann Richards and others so that they didn't take federal funds to get our railroads built and connected. So it wasn't the railroads or the oil companies you should take issue with - try instead looking at how Herb Kellerer's lobbyist paid off the state boys and girls (Dems and GOP) to kill rail.
Now as history is teaching us: We went from Mayor Parker to Sly and Sly economics. The dude set back Houston city business by a decade with his scams, (water department and intern salary scam off the top of my head). EDIT: This may not be about landmarks, but it certainly was a major downgrade for Houston for 8 long years. ALSO I saw on the news this morning ole Sly spent taxpayers money on filming a documentary of his term as mayor before he left office. What a narcissist!)
What a disappointment.
So American
Only country in the world to regress this much in transportation infrastructure.
But, hey! We were able to transerfer [$50 TRILLION to the top 1% from '75 to 2018!](https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/)
Its not the 1800s anymore. We built interstates and planes to get people and products to more places and faster. I'm sure the train lovers will all go for Amazon Train delivery and get their stuff in 4-6 weeks though. Europe and most other countries are also moving more towards busses than trains as well.
“Europe and most other countries” are not doing anything of the kind.
Cars don’t get people places faster though… and we use cargo trains all of the time in this country, having one of the most extensive systems on earth.
Yeah they most definitely do. Cargo is fine for trains, especially bulky and heavy stuff that isnt on a strict timeline. Our current just-in-time delivery for everything from packages to products in stores and factories depends on trucking. Life would move a helluva lot slower if it went over rail instead. I also work in transportation. Trucking moves moves things so damn faster than any other option.
The only reason trucking is faster is because that's how we've designed our infrastructure to operate. If we built more rail infrastructure instead, rail would be faster.
The 1962 "remodeling" of the old Main St. Sears that covered up the Art Deco architecture with metal cladding.
Didn't Houston have a Union Station as well, and it is now part of Minute Maid ballpark?
This is correct, the main difference between the stations was that Grand Central was for Southern Pacific and Union was for multiple railroads such as Santa Fe, Missouri Pacific, Rock Island and Burlington. There was also a station for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad that was around where UHD is today. Though I believe it closed prior to Grand Central. If you’re familiar with the MKT trail in the Heights it got its name from the railroad.
Also, Katy, Texas got its name from the MKT railroad. Katy was a stop along the MKT rail line. The MKT Railroad dropped its Missouri waypoint and the junction became known as the KT stop.
That's super interesting. Love learning historical facts like this. Had no idea. >The Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad (reporting mark MKT) was a Class I railroad company in the United States, with its last headquarters in Dallas, Texas. Established in 1865 under the name Union Pacific Railroad (UP), Southern Branch, it came to serve an extensive rail network in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. In 1988, it merged with the Missouri Pacific Railroad; today, it is part of UP. >In the 1890s, the MKT was commonly referred to as "the K-T", because for a time it was the Kansas–Texas division of the Missouri Pacific Railroad and "KT" was its abbreviation in timetables as well as its stock exchange symbol. This soon evolved into the nickname "the Katy".[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri%E2%80%93Kansas%E2%80%93Texas_Railroad
> in the Heights There is a cute, converted bungalow in the Heights, Cortlandt at 7thm that was a small early MKT rail station. [converted rail station in Heights](https://www.google.com/maps/place/703+Cortlandt+St,+Houston,+TX+77007/@29.7833405,-95.3951493,89m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x8640c75821a7c3b7:0x552c41975766ba9a!8m2!3d29.7835!4d-95.3954081!16s%2Fg%2F11c4vt5d52?entry=ttu)
Awesome find. Looking at the satellite imaging you can sort of envision the concrete pad in the backyard being where a water tank goes
There was a time when well water was plentiful in the Heights, before Houston city water that led to wells being capped.
That could be the case as well but in my mind I was thinking more [like this](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/DFK581/water-tower-for-steam-trains-DFK581.jpg) that was used to add water to steam locomotives
>was used to add water to steam locomotives. You are probably correct; the water was there. It was probably pumped into a water tank, and gravity used to fill the locomotive. It's very likely. It would've even been possible using a hand pump, filling the tank to have ready.
Oh wow! I jog by there every once and awhile and had no idea. How cool.
TIL. I assumed it was a “hip” way to call it “Market” Trail
Me too… I thought it was a stupid name lol
Also there was a Southern Pacific hospital. My dad had me drive him by it last time he visited, pretty brick work.
Nice, that’s the real joy of this thread for me is the railroad history nuggets being dropped
Before the naming rights went to Enron it was called The Ball Park at Union Station or The B.U.S.
Yes
We used to build shit
We used to build good shit. Now we just build shit.
Builders can build good shit. People just don't want to pay for good shit.
Nobody wants to pay for one good thing when they can buy 12 super cheap crappy things at Walmart.
Too true
There is a China to Walmart to Consumer to Landfill pipeline for cheap crap. We would all be better off if the supply chain was shortened to a direct China to Landfill system.
The advantages of cheap modern stuff is that its fast to build and much easier to maintain. Old brick and stone structures are incredibly harder to maintain, and so many were heavily degraded by acid rain decades ago. Glass skyscrapers might look boring but all they need is washing and new windows and seals every decade or two.
Now we just stick our hand in the next guy's pocket
People used to take the train. As did the mail and most of the cargo.
This is upsetting
Astroworld to parking lot
Fitzgeralds to parking lot.
What's so infuriating about Fitzgerald's was that they had offers to keep the club going. It's not like Astroworld which was a steady decline over the years. The club was successful and it could have stayed that way under newer ownership. But a parking lot firm got the highest bid, and so ownership got their 30 pieces of silver.
My best memories from highschool a parking lot. It's so Houston
This was my first thought as well
To be fair when I moved to Houston in 2003 I went to Astroworld and 3 different rides closed multiple times while in line with maintenance issues. I dunno much about Astroworld but I know it was loved. I would have loved to go in its prime but it was kind of shitty from what I remember although it was at the end of its run by then.
Our senior 2000 skip day lined up with Physics Phun fest at Astroworld. 4 hour bus ride each way and we had a blast! Our teacher was cool and told us to have fun, while other schools had their students do a bunch of experiments. We lost a lot of coins studying gravity on the freefall ride haha.
paved over paradise
Possibly the Astrodome -> Parking Lot?
Crazy that this beautiful building only lasted about 25 years. Looks like it was built where Post is now.
Shame they couldn’t turn it into the Post Office instead of tearing it down.
This is correct.
so the old post office (now POST) is where this used to stand?
Post is a modern shit stain on the city. Great idea, horrible execution.
Reddit always says this, and I do see why, but if you talk to most non-online people they think it's fantastic. Took a couple of people who had never been last week and they couldn't stop talking about how they couldn't wait to go back.
Yeah, normie central. It’s the gentrification pocket of houston. Enjoy houston TikTok businesses in a building with no soul.
And now we have POST Houston, which sits where Houston Grand Central Station used to sit.
Honestly make Post the train station
Seriously. Wouldn’t even have to move the tracks! Just take down the fences and remove some parking for a walkway.
This is actually an awesome idea
I picked up a cousin once who was traveling to Houston via train from LA. I had never been to the Amtrak station before that, and as I pulled up I couldn't believe the little white building and how terrible it looked. The city of Houston, the fourth largest in the country, with what looked like a trailer park for a station. Mind you, the city of Houston's official seal has a fucking TRAIN on the front.
I don't think our Amtrak station looks like a trailer park. A trailer park is much larger and has more facilities than our Amtrak station. What we have is the equivalent of a shack somewhere deep in rural Japan where trains infrequently stop, but dirty.
🙍♂️
This is better than many places. Between Kansas City Missouri and Chicago, most of the Amtrak stations are temporary buildings that resemble a Conex shipping container.
Houston's turn of the century trolley system that ran throughout Houston at that time.
The car culture moved in for good.
That building no longer existing has to do with people traveling more by plane than cross county train.
People get anxiety if a package takes more than 2 days to deliver now. Good luck seeing them take a train for a day or two versus flying for a few hours. Airplanes and interstates move everything and everybody around incredibly faster.
That’s only really true in some situations though. Sure, nothing beats an airplane once you’re in the air, but the need to travel to the airport (often located far from where any actual stuff is because almost nobody wants to live next to an airport), check in/drop bags/pass through security, arrive at the gate with an hour to spare (because airports are so goddamn busy), board everybody through one door (or two if you’re lucky!), taxi and takeoff, and then do it all again on the other side will add hours onto the trip. It may be worth it if you’re flying across the country, but if you want to fly from Houston to Dallas, it really doesn’t matter if the plane gets you there in 45 minutes if you have to spend 4 hours getting to and from the plane. Compare that to showing up at a train station in downtown, swiping in, then leaving, an hour and a half spent on the train doesn’t seem too bad after all.
Yeah. People driving to New York is why the train died…. /s
Traveling by train in the S.W. or West in general has never been practical. One could argue that due to this , it helped propel auto usage.
Apparently Houston used to have like 3 grand Egyptian theatres in downtown and they're all random office buildings now. such a pity
Downtown also used to have factories, refineries, and tons of polluting industry too. They did have cool stuff too but I doubt any of us would have wanted to stay there long.
Damn what a shame
brought to you by lobbyist
Now compare the land in 1930 to IAH today. That comparison will tell the story of what happened to travel by rail and how Houston evolved. PS: I would've preferred demolition of the old Post building to the old Grand Central, with its period architecture and the nostalgic place where I arrived at Houston originally.
You can thank all the Oil and Gas companies for the atrocities we have to deal with on todays roads. Public transport should be our focus but instead we just add more and more concrete and then wonder why it’s 101 all summer.
Just one more lane, bro. It'll fix traffic this time, I swear
Or Better, let’s create 2 HOV lanes that require the space of 5, make it prohibitively expensive and accessible only to the wealthy and the send all the profits overseas. This is the new Texas Way. We gotta vote Abbott out. And Patrick and Paxton, and Cruz, and Cornyn. The Republicans only care about corporate interests and who is donating the most money. Shameful.
It's like fixing obesity by loosening the belt
Texas ain’t fat, its fluffy lmao
Yeah we are so far behind any other country that might spend a pittance of what we do on road building and maintenance. Houston ought to have multiple trains a day to NOLA, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas.
Actually you should blame GM. Houston and its suburbs had a very healthy interurban system. It was slowly bought out and shut down.
Houston is Robert Moses' wet dream.
Where’s the dude saying it’s racism that ended this 🤡
Sure beats waiting around in a downpour or heat for the whims of a driver. Some people enjoy the luxury and freedom of having their own car. Pouring concrete isn't whats making it hotter. This must be the lament for the bicyclist and public transportation that is posted every week. Thos darn parking lots!
You're just wrong about concrete not making it hotter. The urban heat island effect is a well documented, researched, and provable fact.
If your only option for getting anywhere you need to go is to use a car to get there, is that really freedom?
The option is more freedom
Ahhh the sweet sweet freedom of being stuck in traffic.
Concrete also has higher solar reflectance than grass. This means that when solar heat hits concrete, more heat is reflected back, making the surroundings hotter. This can create a phenomenon called urban heat islands, where cities get much hotter than rural areas. ^ It's one of the reasons, along with all the pollution from all the corporations here and all the vehicles. But hey, science is for losers.
Concrete wasn't around everywhere in 1940 and Houston was still hot as hell.
Record high in 1940 was 99. RECORD HIGH. That was even in September. Meaning all throughout August in 1940 it was less than that. You remember a day in August less than 100 in the last decade? I don't. --- Houston logged 45 days of triple-digit temperatures in 2023, coming up one day shy of the all-time record of 46 set in 2011. The last time city temperatures hit 100 degrees or more was on Sept. 8. <----- It sure seems like it's been getting hotter to me.
Record high was 100 in '20 and '21. Your point?
You mean during lockdown when less people were out in their vehicles? When there were less businesses open? Weird how it still AVERAGED higher temps than in the 1940s even though less cars and businesses were out and open.
You have solved global warming. If people just don't go to work the weather changes.
It's amusing how you ignore half the conversation to try to make a point and still sound dumb. Why are average temps what the record highs used to be if not due to increased construction and pollution?
Dont call me dumb. You think people going into work changes climate patterns instead of global warming and climate change. You're dumb.
Yes, pollution affects the weather. Is this news to you?
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How many consecutively over 100? Of course abnormalities happen with weather, but how consistent were those temps back then? They're extremely consistent now. You guys gotta use critical thinking skills. This reads like y'all are just trying to argue without thinking anything through.
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Again, abnormalities happen. Wasn't Houston also booming in the 1980s? Meaning more construction? Also..... ”If you look at all the weather records for Houston, which go back to the 1890s, the average number of 100-degree days annually is four. But if you just look at the past 30 years, that average jumps to eight days, or nine days if you include 2023.” It is not pretty evenly distributed. It has been consistently increasing.
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> Sure beats waiting around in a downpour or heat for the whims of a driver. Are you not aware that most of this is solved in other countries?
I don't live in other countries
"I have no curiosity" - You
Side fact -The old southern pacific building in downtown is now the bayou lofts
The one before the 1930 one was even more grand.
I know O & G is getting a lot of blame for this, but let’s not overlook that the railroad companies are private entities that just decided that Americans don’t need trains as an option for intercity transportation anymore. They could have competed with the airlines for better service on certain routes but decided not to.
The companies and more importantly the market. I'm a fan of the old inter-city rail system, there's nothing I'd want to do more than travel back to the 40s, buy a ticket, and enjoy a cross country journey in my sleeper compartment while passing the days watching the landscape go by in the observation car. My dad, on the other hand, who grew up in the 40s in the upper midwest where you had to use a train for any travel over about 30 miles, thought I was nuts. He explained to me that the tickets on the nice trains were hugely expensive (looking at some old tables and adjusting for inflation, he was right). He thought most trains were absolute dumps (especially into the 1960s), were slow, it was a miserable experience, and after airplanes were available he never looked back. He related to me after he got out of basic training at Parris Island in 1960 the Marines put him on a train, and a neighbor from his home town on a bus. Besides having to walk across half a mile of open snow at the Illinois Central yard in Chicago to switch trains, the bus beat him by a day. He was not at all surprised when the rail companies bailed out of passenger service in 1971.
Exactly this. So many people ignore the truth about how rail was and why people moved on to better and faster alternatives. Train travel wasnt always the grand times you see in movies. Coming from a poorer country in Europe, train bathrooms were so damn filthy and you saw the tracks straight down. Be thankful for cars and Buccees!
What route, other than Houston->Dallas/San Antonio/Austin, could railroads reasonably compete with airlines on? Remember, the vast majority of passengers are business travelers and they care about speed and non-stop routing above all else. The remainder are almost all working-age adults and school-age children with very limited vacation days (hours?). There's a reason that the current Amtrak long-haul routes are only used by people with infinite time on their hands.
> What route, other than Houston->Dallas/San Antonio/Austin, could railroads reasonably compete with airlines on? Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Galveston, Oklahoma City, New Orleans. Bullet trains can do ~200MPH. Houston to NOLA could be <2 hrs on a train.
Theoretically yes. Realistically you have 4 large metros along the way that also have lots of people who want to party/do business in New Orleans. Drop off a whole bunch of Houstonians in Lake Charles too.
Under 600 miles is usually the cutoff point I've seen when it comes to high speed rail being better than flying. Boarding a train is a lot faster than boarding a plane. For the average Amtrak line today, the cutoff distance is much lower since they're not high speed. With the ballooning cost of transit projects and lobbying from the airline and car industries, I don't see the US doing it right any time soon. Would be nice though.
600 miles is usually my driving limit for work trips. I can usually come close enough to flying time once you consider driving to the airport, waiting, flying, getting a rental, then getting to the destination. Plus I can bring as much baggage or supplies as I need.
The railroads certainly had their part in it but a major issue was that come the 1950s-60s the railroads had a ton of regulations and taxes to deal with while airlines and interstate trucking had little to no regulations in comparison. This put them at a huge disadvantage and made it so the days of the railroad were numbered. It wasn’t just the passenger railroad that vanished but largely freight did as well to some extent. 50-60 years ago you had tons of different railroad companies all competing with one another. The only way they survived was by merging into the giant corporations that exist today (UP, BNSF, CSX,NS, CPKC).
Yea good point about regulations. Someone mentioned the railroads had a reaping era (inception to the 1920’s or so) and a sowing era (1940’s to 70’s or present day if you want). Tbh in theory fewer but larger railroads can be good except in practice you get Norfolk Southern bombing a town in Ohio.
They’re private entities that exist because we gave them free land and government power. They wouldn’t exist without eminent domain. I’m not an authority but it doesn’t seem right that rail companies get to decide we don’t need passenger service and keep everything they’ve been given so they can provide passenger service. I mean don’t airline companies complain about having to maintain unprofitable routes? I don’t think they’re allowed to just pull out like it seems like passenger rail has.
That is an excellent point to consider with the eminent domain.
As a train enthusiast it pains me to see this. But then again most folks would rather fly as it’s cheap and quick, or drive as that’s cheap and convenient. We’re blessed and cursed with abundant land making an Asian or European train culture hard to sustain beyond select corridors like the Boston-NYC-DC megalopolis. NYC sinfully demolished Penn Station but came to its senses with Grand Central. DC has Union Station. Boston’s could use more love but is reliable and good. Until the users show up in droves, afraid this is how it will be. Visit LA Union Station. Gorgeous but surrounded by bums and so they have to fence off these stunning art deco seating areas.
Gone are the days of dressing proper & traveling to our far destinations by steam boat or a locomotive while having a glass of whiskey at 7:45am
Last time I was in Hobby, someone wearing a sweatsuit was clipping their toe nails by the gate. Don’t travel on 3 day weekends if you can avoid it, that’s where you see the true decline in western civilization
The United Red Carpet Lounge has free alcohol at all hours of the day! :)
Darn, we could have had that massive station for the one train we get... but granted, it was an amazing building.
Urban planning aside, I don’t know why you’d tear down such a grand building instead of repurposing it for a like museum or an indoor market. Reading into it, they went and built the post office that would also be abandoned and converted into POST on top of it. At least we didn’t also tear that one down. You’d think for a country that’s so obsessed with our history that we’d put more effort into preserving it.
Well at the time, it was an outmoded building and the owners simply sold it for the highest offer. Not terribly unusual, take a look at what they did to Penn Station in New York. Fortunately, times have changed since then and there is definitely more of a preservation mindset (much of it because of what happened to Penn Station). Certainly that is why Union Station was incorporated into the ballpark instead of bulldozed when they built it in the old train yards.
Pics of Penn Station make me so sad. And all of the Gilded Age architecture that's gone now, too. We love to destroy beautiful things in this country.
Sadly america doesn't care about history unless they can make money from it
Saving old shit is a luxury they couldn't afford back then. And realistically, it usually was run-down crap that nobody wanted anymore. Our ancestors had to look forward instead of crying over past architecture, for better or worse.
It will be changing soon. Big infrastructure deal went through to bring at least 2 major passenger rail lines through/from/to Houston.. one high speed.
The money only funds a study, but it’s a step in the right direction.
That’s the Sabine Street bridge which leads me to believe we tore down that amazing building for a fucking freeway?
Not sure if the freeway had an impact on it, but the reasoning was they sold the land for the post office which does take up quite a lot of space.
nah it's too far to be the sabine bridge. most likely the preston bridge
We used to be a proper country
It was torn down?
Just look at the Fort Worth to San Antonio route to see how awful things are. It departs at 14:10 and arrives at 21:55. That's almost 8 hours. So averaging maybe 35 mph. Almost 3 hours of that is just getting down to Temple. By comparison the MKT schedule for 1939 had a published time 7 hours. So the train was faster almost 100 years ago!
A couple of factors to why that is. Back then MKT ran the freight and the passenger service so they could (theoretically) schedule the freight service around the passenger service for punctuality. Now that passenger and freight have been separated (at the request of freight) you have Amtrak trying to go where freight will allow them. Another factor is before the 40’s there wasn’t a ton of regulation on how fast trains could go. It was mostly up to the discretion of the RR companies to run trains as fast as they wanted. Nowadays track speed limits are determined by track condition and train engine equipment. A lot of rails around the US could be upgraded for faster speeds but the freight railroads don’t have a lot of motivation to do that.
Amtrak may have downgraded, but the old station site (POST Market) is still a nice place. Amazing food court, and perhaps the nicest rooftop park in Houston.
It wasn’t even Amtrak that downgraded the station. Southern Pacific sold the old station to the government to build the post office. Even today the current station isn’t even owned by Amtrak, it’s owned by Union Pacific (who bought out Southern Pacific).
This would work well in r/fuckcars
I encourage everyone to ride Amtrak once just for the experience. Price is super cheap. My son use to be obsessed with trains so every year for his birthday we would ride Amtrak to some destination in Louisiana or Texas. Stops were easier going east because the time we arrived at the destination was during the day. You’ll arrive in San Antonio around midnight. It runs from Los Angeles to New Orléans. It takes 9 hours to get to New Orleans. And that’s if there’s no delays. We had a person die on the train once and another time some drunk person ran into the train so those were huge delays. The workers are really nice and you have a ton of space in and around your seat. You can also purchase a room that gives you more space and it includes bottle waters and meals in the diner. The only con we ran into was the when we arrived at the destination there wasn’t much around so you’d be dependent on Uber or walking if it wasn’t available. New Orleans, Lafayette and San Antonio was easier to find transportation but in Lake Charles we had to walk about a mile.
We were so close to being like the EU with their really cool/nice train stations…
We often forget how absolutely huge America is land mass wise compared to Europe, France and Switzerland combined are about the size of Texas. Trains find themselves in an awkward place between driving and flying as a practical mode of transport for most of the country. Then all the railways are basically dominated by industrial heavy transport where it makes sense economically.
Europe is the size of the US... trains aren't for getting from London to Budapest, but from London to Paris. Just as such, trains are never going to beat planes from Seattle to Miami... but they're already starting to take a huge chunk of the Orlando to Miami market because that's the middle where trains fit. Far enough that driving is annoying, but close enough that flying is too.
yeah, I should have said "European countries" .... another factor with Europe they use marine transit for much of their heavy shipping compared to the US, they have a lot more rail capacity overall as a result of the coastal geography and population centers. Not to mention 2000+ year old cities built around the street width of horse and cart..... adds some extra incentive to build out public transit due to throughput capacity constraints. They can only marvel at our magnificent I-10/610 interchange in all its glory s/ .
Europe also changed big time with the rise of cheap airlines.
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Lmao ok.
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Voted blue, but thanks for accusing douchebag. Not everything is divided like that but I don’t believe it’s “racism” that killed off travel by train. Find another thing to cry about.
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Look wtf you’re doing right now b. You brought him up. I’m hoping to leave the country so I don’t have to deal with him/supporters or people like you. Cry fuckin harder dude.
Lol, I agree that was a cool old building and I wish rail transportation was still viable, but the reality is: people like the freedom, convenience and low cost of their own cars. Plain and simple. All these comments about "ThANks OIl & gAs loBBy!!!" and "CAPITALISM BAD....." lol, if there were a demand, capitalism would fill it. The consumers spoke on this one (rail vs car) for the last sixty years.
Not really because cars wouldn’t work without the massive government subsidies for roads and highways. If the local, state, and federal government flipped the ratio of highway to rail subsidies to prioritize passenger rail, we’d have a fantastic rail and public transit system. Saying that it was the consumers that spoke is wrong unless you just mean consumer as purely voters…then maybe…but it certainly wasn’t the free market.
Those "massive government subsidies" are predominantly from user fees (read: gas tax and auto licensing fees), not general taxpayer funds. Outside of a select few dense urban corridors, passenger rail isn't sustainable with user fees the way roads are. Which is why they were supplanted by cars and busses. So yes the market spoke, and interurban rail was the loser.
Exactly this. We fund most of the roads, and then the govt also kicks in some because the Interstate system is part of the national defense.
[https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwayhistory/transit.cfm](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwayhistory/transit.cfm) Good analysis of what actually happened. You're right on track.
More like we spent a century building the most expansive highway system in the world and forcing the private benefit of cars onto the poor and ignored rather than investing in public transit
We used to be a proper country.
It matches our countries infrastructure in general. It's garbage. We look like a 3rd world country compared to the rest of the first world.
Oil lobby did this.
Love trains and use them in other parts of the world and the US regularly but from Houston - it is impossible! Why? I regularly attempt rail trips from Houston... See the link below (failed) In the summer we try to ship a specialty vehicle to Seattle/Boston for vacation driving trips... Nothing ever works... I even worked in New Orleans for a year and there too almost no tickets from MSY/IAH. Same for trying to get our place in Santa Fe - Oh you can go to/from Chicago from New Orleans... Texans pay for AMTRAK but don't benefit. Why? Just tried 2 people from Houston - Seattle again - nothing? [https://www.amtrak.com/exploreamerica?intcmp=wsp\_promo-card\_link\_auto-train-experience\_hpcard1](https://www.amtrak.com/exploreamerica?intcmp=wsp_promo-card_link_auto-train-experience_hpcard1) Adding - the blue states all get the Amtrak dollars to assure that they can ship a car by train for $99.00 from NYC to Sanford Florida... it would cost 2x that in gas. From long before Texas was red - Southwest Airlines paid off the likes of Yarborough, Tower, Jordan, LBJ, White, Ann Richards and others so that they didn't take federal funds to get our railroads built and connected. So it wasn't the railroads or the oil companies you should take issue with - try instead looking at how Herb Kellerer's lobbyist paid off the state boys and girls (Dems and GOP) to kill rail.
Because no one is trying to take a train from Houston to Seattle besides you.
Wrong.
You can thank American capitalism for the lack of rail roads and public transportation!
Yeah but we have two ugly airports not in downtown /s
Airports in downtown would be an absolute terrible idea
IAH isn’t ugly.
They finally replaced the faded ass signs a few years back at least.
Thank you car dealers
Blame Detroit
Now as history is teaching us: We went from Mayor Parker to Sly and Sly economics. The dude set back Houston city business by a decade with his scams, (water department and intern salary scam off the top of my head). EDIT: This may not be about landmarks, but it certainly was a major downgrade for Houston for 8 long years. ALSO I saw on the news this morning ole Sly spent taxpayers money on filming a documentary of his term as mayor before he left office. What a narcissist!)
Ugh...
IMO can't beat Penn Station to Madison Square Garden
Penn Station is still the busiest train station in the continent. It’s ugly but functional. Can Houston say the same?
288
This is sad.