High-speed rail could zip past downtown Dallas under a revised route that regional elected leaders will consider this week.
The proposal, developed after the Dallas City Council approved a June 12 resolution opposing an elevated line through downtown and adjacent neighborhoods, will be shared at a Regional Transportation Council meeting scheduled July 11 in Arlington.
Fort Worth-area leaders have pledged to support a rail plan that will benefit North Texas, where the population is expected to double from 8 million to more than 15 million by 2050, according to growth estimates presented by the North Central Texas Council of Governments. The transportation council is an independent policy group of the council of governments.
The revised route to connect Dallas, Arlington and Fort Worth with high-speed rail to Houston incorporates about 97% of the initial proposal, said Michael Morris, director of transportation for the council of governments.
The new route “will salvage our commitment” to high-speed rail, Morris said. The plan was still being worked out days before the July 11 meeting.
Morris said it was ironic that Dallas City Council members opposed an elevated high-speed rail line through the city’s downtown, as they gave initial approval to the plan.
Under the new plan, a high-speed rail station would be located south of downtown and avoid connections to the Union Station rail complex and the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas, which will undergo a $3.7 billion expansion intended to boost tourism, create jobs and connect downtown with South Dallas.
[…]
Dallas City Council member Chad West, who serves on the Regional Transportation Council, said the Dallas council has been on recess in July, so he hadn’t heard about the proposed route to bypass downtown Dallas.
He described that proposal as “interesting.”
The initial plan, he said, included a stop in The Cedars neighborhood south of downtown, which would address the Dallas council’s concerns about the rail project’s impact on the Central Business District.
“There are pros and cons to that,” West said, adding that he supports an underground stop in downtown Dallas.
West said he supports the rail project to Arlington and Fort Worth but wants to ensure that downtown Dallas is protected. Making downtown Dallas more walkable is important, West said, especially as the 2026 FIFA World Cup will bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city.
See here for the background. Nothing is ever certain until it happens, but it sounds like this could work. If this goes forward, and if it connects to the Texas Central high speed rail line to Houston, someone starting out in Fort Worth could end up at the terminal at Northwest Mall, where they won’t be easily able to connect to the rest of Houston, thanks to our Metro and its inaction. Not the happy ending we deserve, is it?
I really hate that we waste so much time on big complex and overly ambitious expensive vanity projects. Why do we not have a simple conventional say 75-110mph rail network connecting the Texas Triangle cities. Would take a fraction of the cost no silly land acquisition disputes, easier to connect to local metros. If i wanna get to Dallas super fast i can literally fly for 40 min. There’s nothing wrong with a train from Downtown houston using current tracks to take maybe 2-3 hours to get to Downtown Dallas as long as its faster than a car and we def have trains and tracks capable of at least 90mph speeds.
The problem is that those tracks are owned by Union Pacific, and thus the freight trains take priority on those lines. It’s not a question of how fast the trains can currently go; it’s a question of their ability to achieve those speeds at a sustained go.
The only way to fix the problem is to build separate passenger rail lines. And if you’re doing that, you might as well build them for high-speed trains, which can achieve maximum speeds of 160-200 mph.
Also, flying to Dallas isn’t quite as fast as all that. There’s travel to Hobby Airport, parking, going through security, waiting for the plane, and then disembarking and travel to Dallas at the other end. The entire trip takes more like 2-2.5 hours, not 40 minutes. And yes, riding a train would take some of that time, but not nearly as much (for instance, trains have more doors and can board passengers much more quickly than a plane). The all-in travel time between a plane and high-speed rail is comparable once you factor in these additional time constraints.