Texans have been toggling with the idea of building a high speed train connecting Houston, Tx to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for many years now. When talk of the Texas Rail Plan (TRP), arose this time around, the discussion didn’t sound like a mythical idea anymore, tangible progress had been made. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Washington, D.C this past summer and worked with President Biden in support of Texas using Japanese bullet trains for the proposed Texas Rail Plan. Shortly after, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) organized a public virtual meeting allotting anyone to ask questions and offer input on the TRP before they finalizes the trains’ projected budget. The unnamed train is proposed to be built and operated by Texas Central Partners and Amtrak with the capability of crossing 240 miles of rural, city, and residential areas in only 90-minutes.
There’s been a lot of debate whether this idea would cause more harm than good. Farmers are concerned about the construction ruining their land, cattle, and produce. Homeowners are concerned with losing their home in order to make room for these new structures. On the other hand, those who like to travel are excited for the idea of being able to travel faster between two major U.S cities. TxDOT understands those differences and has a made a big effort in attempting to hear from every point of view in order to ensure the budget for this project matches the needs and concerns of the public. The final touches of the budget are being refined, which makes this a crucial point in the planning process.
TxDOT believes this new construction will cost between 27-33 billion dollars to establish. The budget is scheduled to be reviewed this Winter, so the decision of being accepted or denied will be made fairly quickly. Their virtual meeting was hosted by their Division Director and other lead role employees with knowledge of the current TRP details. The meeting began by first giving a full explanation of who the Texas Department of Transportation is, and the standards they uphold. TxDOT is responsible for planning and coordinating rail projects, analyzing infrastructure and operations, managing state-owned railroads, supervise rail-highway safety inspections, and regulating other rail related policies. Their main focuses in every day assessments of efficiency are safety, reliability, modernization, and connectivity. Their goals for the TRP were listed as follows:
- Safety, reduce rail road fatalities and injuries at rail crossings.
- Asset management, repairs of assets owned by TxDOT
- Mobility and reliability, reducing traffic congestion and improving the rail system efficiency, capacity and performance and travel time and reliability.
- Multimodal connectivity by improving systems
- Economic competitiveness, strengthening Texas’s position as a trade and logistics hub and support both existing industries and attraction of new industries.
In a nutshell, they wanted the audience to understand their role is to make sure the Rail Plan is within state guidelines of safe operations. Some of the public questions included concerns of Houston and Dallas traffic and existing Amtrack station specifications, which were all addressed by redirecting people to the Service Development Plan. One of the most pressing questions people wanted answered was, how safe can it possibly be for a train of this magnitude to travel through residential areas? Well, there wasn’t a straight answer for that quite yet. Before setting a speed regulation, they first have to test the roads then offer a vote for the community. One step at a time, once the rails are complete, then speed tests can occur. They also want to evaluate the restoration of daily intercity passenger services along discontinued, non-daily, and new long distance routes.
The proposed network of preferred routes from the FRA long distance service study include
- Dallas/Fort Worth to Miami
- Denver to Houston (via Amarillo and Dallas/Fort Worth)
- Phoenix to Minneapolis/St. Paul (via Amarillo)
- Dallas/Fort Worth to New York
- Houston to New York
- San Antonio to Minneapolis/St Paul (via Dallas/Fort Worth)
- San Francisco to Dallas/Fort Worth (via El Paso and Midland)
- Dallas/Fort Worth to Atlanta (via I-20)
- El Paso to Billings
- Houston to San Antonio
- Dallas to Oklahoma, to Louisiana along I-20 and I-10
The high-speed train would bring Dallas-Fort Worth travelers to the downtown area, and Houston travelers to highway 290 area near Northwest Mall. TxDOT is unsure if the rail will have a 75-foot above ground entrance or if it would be better below ground level.
There are plans to coordinate with airports and other transit hubs in order to expand transportation instead of simply adding a new one. The Rail Division is still taking input from the public throughout the next few weeks. Using links on their website, any Texas resident can give their two cents in on their support or denial of the Rail Plan. More passenger and freight stakeholder workshops will be offered over the next few months for the public to stay informed. There’s a tug of war between making the new rail a straight shot between two cities, and having multiple stops to assist city councils’ who want this train to simultaneously run as commuter rail or intercity designations for all passengers. The overall benefit to the public is fewer stops, and higher speeds. The technology that runs bullet speed trains as part of Japan Railways have been operating with no accidents, injuries, or fatalities since 1964. Texas Central, the company developing Texas’s Rail Plan, states the N700 system Japan uses is “the safest and most reliable mass transportation system in the world today.” Future stations are set to run much like an airport with rental car services, parking garages, ride share areas, and connection to local bus routes. This also opens the door for more jobs to be created as there will be a need for more bus drivers, train conductors, skilled labor teams, metal workers, and other businesses that may collab to provide food and other conveniences to rail users. Being able to leverage federal funds is top priority. Numerous permits are being processed and security procedures are being perfected working with the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration.
