granted this is the canadian border, certainly a big difference than the mexican border.

Some do understand, some don’t. But everybody who has heard about RoadRunner knows that’s been a great success, with ridership nicely outstripping the forecasts, and a load of good publicity for passenger rail.

“Extending RoadRunner” is full of the positive. But “a new Amtrak route” not so much.

And “HSR” is probably somewhere in between those extremes in the pubic mind, and few without a passport really knowing what it means. (Do we know what it means here at The Transport Politic? Is 125 mph Harrisburg-Philly a solid step toward true HSR or a waste of money and effort? I don’t know if we settled that!)

So when New Mexico politicians propose extending RoadRunner, they may know exactly what they mean, but they’re just saying, “Let’s do more successful passenger rail.”

Of course, a regular Amtrak train could be not that much different from an extended RoadRunner. The corridor is hundreds of miles long, and most of it is empty. I see only three stops between El Paso and
the south end of the current RoadRunner route.

At the southern end, however, the route might easily support a clone of RoadRunner. Las Cruces, the second largest metro in N.M., is within the orbit of El Paso — watching the same broadcast TV, using the ELP airport, etc. The Interstate is clogged with both east-west traffic on I-10 and north-south truck traffic via Juarez. That stretch of irrigated river valley is intensively farmed and densely populated — it recalls the Nile Valley with desert on either side. And with UTEP at one end at NM State at the other, a ‘RoadRunner South’ line would be almost a college shuttle.

Making that stretch of ROW workable for passenger rail could be a big job. Many grade crossings would be difficult to eliminate, because farmer Brown and farmer Moreno work fields on both sides of railroad. But once beyond Las Cruces, getting up to “Amtrak speed” with stops in Truth or Consequences and Socorro should not be so much work. And then you’re on the RoadRunner tracks from Belen into Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

Our friends over at unitedrail.org always favor expanding Amtrak’s system of long distance trains, arguing that every station and every link adds more passengers to the totals on the trains on the other routes. A Front Range route from El Paso to Albuquerque to Denver would surely do that, linking three east-west routes.

I expect a new Front Range train running “Amtrak speed” up to Cheyenne would be as successful (or not) as the other long distance trains. To me, with at least two frequencies a day, that would be worth doing. And maybe that’s all that Gov Bill Richardson, Cong Harry Teague, Cong Silvestre Reyes, and the others in NM and El Paso are looking for in the next 10 or 20 years.

Colorado might be ready for HSR running Pueblo-Colo Springs-Denver-Ft Collins-(maybe)Cheyenne much sooner, but the two goals should not be mutually exclusive. Meanwhile, talking about “extending RoadRunner” gives cover to the New Mexico delegation when they vote for the stimulus bill, cap-and-trade, etc.

They might convince the US to build a sealed Customs portal on the US side of the bridge, so that the entire train line is in “Mexican territory”.

There’s a good photo of the international trolley in operation at http://www.flickr.com/photos/romanherdez/3796458913/

The two downtowns are very close, walking distance if you are broke, and many thousands of Mexicans cross every day to shop and work (many have the papers to work legally) in El Paso. Few gringos cross nowadays, due to the drug-induced terror and corruption besetting most Border towns and especially Juarez, where hundreds of women have been murdered in a wave of unsolved crimes.

Meanwhile El Paso’s downtown has suffered as malls and big box stores have attracted middle-class Mexicans with cars and spending money. Efforts are underway to rejuvenate the area, which will require eminent domain actions against some commercial buildings with slumlord owners.

Already a grand old movie palace has been remade into a theater for touring Broadway shows, music acts, etc. A Doubletree hotel has opened on the framework of a motel that had closed for years. But something more is needed to attract back those Mexican shoppers.

I can’t see trams actually crossing through much territory on the other side of either border. Recognizing the quantity of contraband that is seized from cars and trucks, the Drug Enforcement Agency concerns would make that notion problematic.

I could envision streetcars running to a meeting point. The streetcar from Juarez could take people to the pedestrian bridge over the mighty Rio Grande — a crossing about a block long over a few feet of water. The El Paso streetcar could pick them up on the other side.

The riders would become pedestrians and be processed through Immigration just as they are today. That would eliminate the inevitable delays in the schedules if each streetcar and all its passengers had to wait for onboard inspections and searches to be completed.

El Paso is a growing Sun Belt city with a growing bus system, with a number of strong destinations for a transit system. Downtown has office buildings and courthouses, museums and a convention center. Older close-in neighborhoods have good density. The local campus of the University of Texas is big and getting bigger, and the UTEP teams pull large crowds into the Haskins arena and Sun Bowl. Also, several large malls along I-10, an industrial area and several districts filled with warehouses serving the maquiladora factories on the other side, and a close-in airport. The Army’s desert warfare training center at Fort Bliss, is one of (or is it THE?) largest bases in the country.

And not to forget a century-old train station that could welcome more trains on the Sunset Limited route, commuter rail from Las Cruces about 45 miles away, and a hoped-for Front Range route to Albuquerque, Denver, and Cheyenne.

However, and excuse my saying so, but with any involvement of the Mexican governments, this cross-border streetcar will probably be done manana. And I remind readers that the word is correctly understood not as meaning “tomorrow” but rather as “not today.” The Americans might get their side of it done sooner, or not.