New Name, New Gameplan for Billion-Dollar Lone Star Rail District

The Lone Star Rail District has changed its name from Austin-San Antonio Intermunicipal Commuter Rail District to the simpler Lone Star Rail District. As the agency behind the LSTAR, a proposed passenger train between Georgetown and San Antonio, it has been authorized by the Legislature since the late '90s but has yet to make any real headway.

The Statesman's Ben Wear says,

"the train service is still mostly a line on a map. As agency board chairman Sid Covington says, the main obstacles to creating a commuter line between Austin and San Antonio are now and always have been Union Pacific freights and money.

It's a matter of too much of the first and not enough of the latter."

The plan is to swap the Union Pacific freight rail line for a commuter line. The existing line suffers from many of the same challenges as I-35--the main highway on which the proposed line aims to alleviate traffic. The Lone Star Rail District's website says,

It’s outdated, runs right through the heart of major cities, and leaves little room for expansion or improved service. Moving through-freight traffic to other, more suitable and more modern corridors would have benefits for the railroad and its customers as well as the communities in the corridor.

CAMPO and its San Antonio sister organization have committed $40 million over the next four years, allowing the district to get of the ground environmental studies and design work, which, according to its website, will take until 2011 to complete.

The study will also investigate the feasibility and practicality of the 16 proposed stops along the rail line, which includes stations in Georgetown, Round Rock, McNeil Junction, the intersection of Braker Lane and MoPac, the intersection of 35th Street and MoPac, Downtown Austin near the Seaholm Power Plant, Slaughter Lane, Buda/Kyle and San Marcos, according to a Comunity Impact News article.

Overall, according to this KVUE video, the project requires $3 billion in funding. The video below explores some of the economic incentives for building the line, and how it will affect taxpayers.

Given Capital Metro's malaise in finishing its intra-Austin commuter line, the words of Sid Covington, Lone Star Rail District board chariman, are particularly prescient: "This is a train that your grandkids and your grandkids kids will be able to ride on, and it'll happen before we know it."