Backers of a Texas bullet train are moving to the next stop, selecting a team to build the Houston-to-Dallas line, despite not having a clear shot – yet – at construction.
Texas Central on Monday morning announced it reached agreement with Irving-based Fluor Enterprises and The Lane Construction Corporation, based in Connecticut, for further refinement and study of the proposed route. Once financing for the project, expected to cost at least $12 billion, is secured and federal approvals are obtained, the companies would then be the primary design-builders of the line.
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Texas Central, which despite some opposition emerged from the state legislative session unscathed, is also awaiting a federal environmental process necessary to proceed. Company officials are also lining up financing for the project. Any construction will have to wait for those outcomes.
In 2014, officials predicted work would start by 2017. Based on typical timelines for federal review, the earliest construction could start on the line would be late 2018, meaning a 2023 completion, according to Texas Central’s previous timelines.
The company also continues to face opposition, especially in rural areas of Texas where some landowners remain steadfast in not selling their land, and local elected officials have said the project provides little benefit.
I post this not because it’s particularly interesting but to put a pin in where we stand today. Texas Central survived the legislative session without anything bad happening to them, and if all goes more or less as they say, they will have started construction on the line by the time the 2019 Lege gavels in. Will that be sufficient insurance against further legislative meddling? Maybe, I don’t know. On the one hand, a project in progress ought to be harder to kill, but on the other hand since this project will necessarily involve some taking of land, that may just amp up the urgency. Ask me again in January of 2019.
Assuming the legislative field is clear for now, the remaining hurdles are as noted the draft environmental impact statement, and the ongoing legal skirmishes regarding whether or not Texas Central qualifies as a “railroad” and thus can exercise eminent domain. I don’t expect anything weird from the DEIS though one never knows. What I really don’t know is what happens if individual landowners can keep TCR away from their property. If they don’t have any legal leverage, I’m not sure how this thing gets built. I’m sure TCR has its best people working on that, so we’ll just have to see how it plays out.
Couldn’t they just do a there will be blood sort of thing and go over or under the holdouts? Elevate it and put the supports on property they do own, or tunnel under?