I mean its not like they really had much of a choice for the route. They didn't build new tracks, just reused old existing tracks and built stations along the w

I mean its not like they really had much of a choice for the route. They didn't build new tracks, just reused old existing tracks and built stations along the way. I lived in Austin when they were voting to build the rail line and there was so much opposition that they never would have been able to get funding for any serious development of new tracks. There was a proposal for a while to run trains up Mopac, along the train line in the middle of the highway there, but apparently that wasn't possible because there is too much freight traffic on that line. > The political opposition is typically strongest exactly where transit is most valuable That actually wasn't the case either. The original proposal was for a roughly $2 billion project, and while it had lots of support in the central city the suburbs voted against it. In the end they got the proposal passed, but with a drastically reduced budget, and were only able to spend about $100 million to build a rail system. So they just slapped together the red line on existing rail tracks