Good.
Amtrak has received a nearly $64 million grant to continue planning the Texas High-Speed Rail project after several years of stagnation due to the COVID pandemic.
The project — which proposes a less than 90-minute high-speed rail route between Houston and Dallas, with one stop in the Brazos Valley — has been progressing through the early planning and development stages for the past several years as it continues to lobby for support among Texans and representatives alike. According to early concepts of the route, the Houston station would be located at the Northwest Mall site near the interchange of US 290 and Interstate 610.
The $63.9 million grant was awarded last month as part of $153 million in funding made available by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in early July. According to FRA, the funds were created as part of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which was passed under the Biden Administration in Nov. 2021. The main goal of the grant money is to “initiate, restore and enhance intercity passenger rail services.” This most recent influx of federal money follows on the heels of a $500,000 grant to Amtrak in December 2023.
In August 2023, Amtrak said that it was exploring the possibility of a partnership with Texas Central, the company originally behind the Houston-Dallas corridor concept. Less than a year later, Amtrak’s senior vice president and head of high-speed rail development, Andy Byford, announced Amtrak was officially in charge of the project.
“One of the first things Amtrak did in taking over the project was to undertake research to see [if] the demand is still there post-COVID that the same research indicated there was pre-COVID,” he said in April during the 2024 Southwestern Rail Conference. “The actual forecast, in terms of the projected ridership, is very strong and that’s important because that means you can then make a business case for the capital investment.”
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Amtrak did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the new grant, but Byford told the Texas Rail Advocates that the project has now progressed into the final step of the FRA Corridor Identification Program.
See here for the previous update. I have no idea how long this part of the process may take, but at least it’s moving along.