Bloomberg examines the recent history and possible future of the Texas high speed rail line.
The US is “on the cusp of a high-speed rail revolution,” says Andy Byford, Amtrak’s Senior Vice President for High-Speed Rail Development Programs. “Suddenly, people are beginning to wake up to the fact that there is this alternative” to flying and driving.
The English-born Byford — dubbed “Train Daddy” by grateful New York City straphangers for his work leading the city’s subway system out of crisis as head of the New York City Transit Authority from 2018 to 2020 — landed at Amtrak in 2023 to take up another challenge: getting the national passenger rail corporation’s high-speed ambitions back on track. The Lone Star State could offer the best opportunity. The 240-mile Dallas to Houston corridor, with a stop in the Brazos Valley serving Texas A&M University, is ideal for high-speed rail, Byford says: “It’s the right distance apart. The topography is pretty straightforward. The potential ridership is huge.”
The trip between the state’s two largest metropolitan areas now takes at least three and a half hours by car. On a train that can top 200 mph, it would be less than 90 minutes.
But even if the idea makes sense on paper, the “north of $30 billion” endeavor, as Byford describes it, still faces enormous hurdles. The Texas legislature has not looked favorably upon the idea of using state funds for rail transportation. The structure of the project, a public-private partnership, would be unlike anything Amtrak has attempted in the past. And it will need to find funders willing to bet on a transportation technology that has yet to prove its mettle in America.
“The private financing pieces would be a lot easier if Texas would just say, ‘We support this project,’” says Rick Harnish, executive director of the US High Speed Rail Alliance, an outside advocacy group.
Super-fast trains have eyed this route in the past. In 1989, state legislators established a Texas High-Speed Rail Authority and a group of investors led by former Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes advanced plans for a “Texas Supertain” between Houston and Dallas, which would later extend to Austin and San Antonio. But the notion of a 600-mile-long statewide high-speed rail network faced opposition from rural residents and Dallas-based Southwest Airlines: In a brief filed with the state rail authority in 1991, the company argued that “high-speed rail will be viable in Texas only by destroying the convenient and inexpensive transportation service the airlines now provide.” State lawmakers dissolved the authority a few years later.
The current plan for a Dallas-to-Houston bullet train was hatched in 2009 by Texas Central, a US company working in partnership with Central Japan Railway Company. Also known as JR Central, the Japanese firm runs the nation’s oldest Shinkansen high-speed rail routes. Over the following decade, Texas Central raised hundreds of millions of dollars, including a $300 million loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. By 2020, the group had secured all necessary environmental approvals and had received permission from the Federal Railroad Administration to use equipment from JR Central’s Shinkansen network. It also acquired 30% of the parcels it needed for its right of way.
“They got it down to the 10-yard line,” says Peter LeCody, president of Texas Rail Advocates, a group that has been lobbying in favor of the Dallas to Houston project since its inception. Then, in 2022, Texas Central disbanded its board of directors and appeared to halt operations.
That takes us to where we are today with Amtrak. It’s good to be reminded that with all of the delays and disappointments, Texas Central actually got pretty far, and that was with little to no cooperation from the state and an awful lot of opposition from various groups. Maybe with some real investment from the feds it would be possible to take it the rest of the way. I know, I know, it feels like we’ve been down this road a bunch before, but I’m still not ready to give up. There’s a lot that needs to happen, but a lot that already did happen. Just take it from there.
Texas Central’s plans are a taxpayer nightmare, a boondoggle to beat all boondoggles that came before. Why can’t we build a railway along the EXISTING I-45 line & not cut up farmsteads & ranches. And why can’t we use US-gauge lines & US machinery?
Donna, re: “Why can’t we build a railway along the EXISTING I-45 line & not cut up farmsteads & ranches. And why can’t we use US-gauge lines & US machinery?”
My guess is that constructing a high speed rail line within the existing I-45 highway easment wouldn’t fly (no pun intended) is due to it’s current, fixed width, the fact that it passes both under and over existing cross streets and highway interchanges (which would be a financial nightmare when contructing over/under), etc., over the course of 240 miles, because US (rail) gauge lines vary by rail line and location, and that the US has no extensive experience in building high speed (150-220mph) rail line ‘parts’.
But I’m just an Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.
Donna, the original plan for the line was for it to run alongside I-45. And then the original opposition to the line came from The Woodlands, and that wound up being enough for the route to be changed to the current configuration.