Texas Who?

     “Texas May Be Fracking Its Way Into Extinction” writing by my classmate who’s blog is called “Make America Blog Again”. Her commentary was about how the outcomes of fracking are destroying Texas. She includes examples such as water pollution, earthquakes, global warming and finally how fracking permanently removes water from its natural cycle.

     Her statement was, why is Texas allowing fracking when it's destroying it. Explaining that oil companies are buying out (lobbying) the government officials.  She makes a funny remark when she mentions, “However Oil companies have lots of money to spare on advertising, political agendas, and pimping out government officials as "political prostitutes." Furthermore, she explains how Governor Greg Abbot is a “political prostitute”, because he signed a bill allowing oil companies to frack all over Texas.

    I enjoyed reading this article because I once wanted to become a Petroleum Engineer. This could have been a factor that made me attach to her commentary. It was simple, straightforward and to the point. I liked the idea that she mentioned so many flaws from fracking, but she seemed biased about it. Although I completely agree with her, she could have mentioned something like, “Although fracking reduces our gas prices, helps the economy drastically, it's killing the environment. What is money when you don’t have potable water and a clean environment.” Overall her commentary was amazing and humorous, thus enjoying it the most out of all my other classmates.

Do you enjoy long rides on a train?

   A perfect world where you could go back to Dallas where you tasted the best, al pastor tacos. When you didn’t have the chance to eat at every single restaurant in the river walk, in San Antonio. When you stopped at the car wash in Forth Worth and saw your dream cars getting hand washed and detailed. But knowing the probability of you going back is slim to none. Why? Because yo're too lazy to drive.

   My proposition is creating a train connecting: Austin, San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, and Forth Worth. The total distance between all of them accumulates to 692-miles according to Google maps. The 177-mile long maglev train that is getting built in Japan cost them an estimated amount of 51 billion dollars. Therefore, it would cost Texas an estimated of 204 billion dollars.  And let’s just add another 50 billion, just to be save add stops like San Marcos, New Braunfels, Killeen, Huntsville. San Marcos for the outlets, New Braunfels for Six flags, Killen it’s just in the way and to be fair I know a cute girl that lives there so why not, and Huntsville… National Forest.

   Right now, you’re probably thinking this guy is crazy, 254 billion, NO WAY JOSE! But notice how I said Texas will pay for it. That’s probably chump change for them, this transportation system is going to be their next black gold. Why do I say this? Well because I also did research on tourism and in Austin, alone tourist spend an estimated amount of 7 billion annual according to DowntownAustin.com. This is no surprise, we host ACL, SXSW, F1, BMX and all kinds of crazy things.

   Tourism will increase with the train. The economy is going to be so good people are going to start moving here. (they already are) But there would be one difference. We won’t be mad at them for adding to the traffic problem. Why? Because We have a train. We as Texans won’t see a train as means of transportation because we’re still not as big as a large city such as L.A.  But statistics show that we are increasing in population very rapidly. And we need to prepare for those days. Austin wasn’t designed for a large population, I can’t speak for the rest of the cities, but I can tell you one thing. When your driving do you focus on the scenery or the road? Now when someone is driving do you focus on the car in front of you or what’s ahead of you?

   We need to look ahead and let money not be an obstacle. We don’t want it we need it.