Harris County is once again a part of the Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation after Commissioners Court voted to start paying its dues again.
Precinct 4 Commissioner Jerry Eversole put high-speed rail on Tuesday’s agenda, saying Harris County needs to actively lobby for a direct link between Dallas and Houston.
“How can you get something if you’re not even part of the organization that’s putting it together?” Eversole said. He said he hopes some day to see an alternative to “airports and concrete” that could get people from Houston to Dallas in an hour.
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“I don’t see this corporation as the entity that’s going to make it happen, but they’re going to be the driving force that gets the legislators’ attention and gets the governor’s attention,” said [County Judge Ed] Emmett, former CEO of a national transportation trade group. “If we don’t start on high-speed rail now, then we’re going to look up 20 years from now and be kicking ourselves for not doing what we needed to do.”
One could say the same thing now about what we didn’t do 20 years ago, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there. I hope this small step makes it just a bit more likely that Texas will fare better in the next round of funding for these projects.