A pricey legal fight over high-speed rail routes in North Texas could be on the horizon.
The Regional Transportation Council, an independent policy group of the North Central Texas Council of Governments, could allocate $1 million in funding “in preparation for potential litigation” by Dallas-based Hunt Realty Investment Inc. related to an environmental assessment for high-speed rail in the Fort Worth-Dallas area.
The local funding request will be considered at the transportation council’s Jan. 9 meeting in Arlington, according to the group’s agenda.
Council staff has received “numerous correspondences” from attorneys representing Hunt Realty and other Hunt-related entities concerned about a proposed high-speed rail route through downtown Dallas that includes the 20-acre Reunion property owned by Hunt. The company wants to invest $5 billion into development on land surrounding the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Reunion Tower.
Hunt Realty Investment Inc. and other Hunt-related entities have sent 16 separate items to the Council of Governments since Oct. 9, 2024, asserting various legal and factual claims regarding the environmental assessment as well as a 1975 master agreement between Hunt entities and the city of Dallas.
In an Oct. 21 letter to the Council of Governments general counsel, attorney Eric Gambrell of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP said the current route alignment — known as Alignment B — “would undeniably threaten, irreparably harm and severely damage the Reunion development as well as the potential for new economic activity adjacent to Dallas’ new $3 billion Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.”
Construction, which will expand the center’s space to 2.5 million square feet, began last year with a completion date of 2029.
The route, Gambrell said, “would contravene and interfere with the City’s and Hunt’s legal and lawful rights under their Reunion Master Agreement — in place since 1975.”
The Council of Governments’ continued action on high-speed rail “is in defiance and disregard” of the resolution Dallas City Council members approved June 12.
Council members unanimously opposed a downtown Dallas route so the city could conduct a long-range economic impact study to determine the effects of the rail project in the Central Business District. In their resolution, council members said, “the City Council does not support construction of any above ground passenger rail lines through downtown and adjacent areas aside from streetcar projects.”
In addition, Gambrell wrote Nov. 18, the Council of Governments did not disclose to the Federal Transit Administration the Dallas master agreement’s “legal bar” to the alignment nor did it “disclose numerous other significant adverse impacts that would result from the alignment.”
The revised alignment for the rail project, developed after the resolution passed, is still being finalized but would generally take trains west of Interstate 35 East and run mostly parallel with South Riverfront Boulevard and extend over several businesses.
The proposed route would cross Interstate 30 from the north and avoid the convention center before heading south to the elevated high-speed rail station at the Cedars neighborhood south of the Dallas Central Business District.
A high-speed rail route from Fort Worth and Arlington to Dallas that could carry up to 30,000 daily passengers is currently more than four years into a lengthy engineering and environmental review process related to the National Environmental Policy Act. The regional agency is working with the Federal Transit Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, and other state and federal agencies on the proposal. The review process could be complete by March 2025 but the Council of Governments has been granted some flexibility for those requirements.
In August, the Regional Transportation Council approved $1.6 million in additional funding for the $12 million study of the route that would run west of downtown Dallas to Arlington and Fort Worth.
Although Dallas officials balked at a route through the city’s downtown, regional officials want to link that route with a separate Dallas to Houston high-speed rail project underway by Amtrak and Texas Central. That project, which would include a stop near College Station, received $63.9 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration. Those funds were awarded in July 2024 as part of the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure law.
The Council of Governments said it is preparing a response to the Hunt inquiry. The council has provided about 2,500 pages of documents in April 2024 in response to the request by the Hunt attorneys. Attorneys for Hunt Realty requested the Council of Governments “preserve and not destroy” documents broadly related to high-speed rail and the environmental assessment.
“Such a notice is often a precursor to litigation,” the Regional Transportation Council agenda said.
Council staff recommends the transportation council allocate $1 million in local funds to be used in $250,000 increments for additional legal support to assist in responding to the legal matters and other preparatory work.
If the item is approved, the funds would be provided on a quarterly basis to the Regional Transportation Council.
Eric E. Garcia is a senior business reporter at the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at eric.garcia@fortworthreport.org.
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