Amtrak has received a nearly $64 million grant to continue planning the Texas High-Speed Rail project after several years of stagnation due to the COVID pandemic.
The project — which proposes a less than 90-minute high-speed rail route between Houston and Dallas, with one stop in the Brazos Valley — has been progressing through the early planning and development stages for the past several years as it continues to lobby for support among Texans and representatives alike. According to early concepts of the route, the Houston station would be located at the Northwest Mall site near the interchange of US 290 and Interstate 610.
The $63.9 million grant was awarded last month as part of $153 million in funding made available by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in early July. According to FRA, the funds were created as part of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which was passed under the Biden Administration in Nov. 2021. The main goal of the grant money is to "initiate, restore and enhance intercity passenger rail services." This most recent influx of federal money follows on the heels of a $500,000 grant to Amtrak in December 2023.
In August 2023, Amtrak said that it was exploring the possibility of a partnership with Texas Central, the company originally behind the Houston-Dallas corridor concept. Less than a year later, Amtrak's senior vice president and head of high-speed rail development, Andy Byford, announced Amtrak was officially in charge of the project.
"One of the first things Amtrak did in taking over the project was to undertake research to see [if] the demand is still there post-COVID that the same research indicated there was pre-COVID," he said in April during the 2024 Southwestern Rail Conference. "The actual forecast, in terms of the projected ridership, is very strong and that's important because that means you can then make a business case for the capital investment."
It is currently unclear what changes, if any, Amtrak has made to the plans for the Texas High-Speed Rail Corridor, but Byford said during his presentation that the Houston to Dallas route was nearly a perfect candidate.
"You want to have a line that is reasonably easy to construct, that has relatively straightforward topography," he said. "You're looking for routes which maybe have suboptimal alternatives, maybe a very dangerous and overcrowded interstate or overcrowded airports. If you put together all those characteristics and then you figure out which route you would build, there's one that really stands out and that is Dallas to Houston."
As of the April presentation, Byford said Amtrak and the Japanese government have entered a non-binding agreement to move the project forward again. According to Byford, the hope would be to use an N700S Series Shinkansen train from Japan. This would mean the 240-mile route between Houston and Austin could be completed in under 90 minutes at 205 MPH, which would be the fastest average train journey in the world.
"The Shinkansen has a flawless safety record," he said. "It has not had a single chain-cause fatality in its whole operation since 1964 and that's because what you're buying is a system."
If Amtrak can accomplish its ambitious goal, Byford said it could begin a new age of high-speed rails across the U.S.
"If we are successful in putting together that funding package ... then we will be looking to open in the early 2030s and that includes testing, commissioning, trial operations, and everything else," he said. "So, watch this space. There [are] still a lot of big hurdles to overcome, but I really do think that this, if we can pull it off, will be an absolute jewel in Texas's crown."
Amtrak did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the new grant, but Byford told the Texas Rail Advocates that the project has now progressed into the final step of the FRA Corridor Identification Program.
However, not everyone is in favor of the proposed high-speed corridor, including the organization ReRoute the Route — which was created by "Texas business and civic leaders" to lobby against the corridor's creation.
Citing the federal budget deficit and the nation's more than $35 trillion in debt, federal affairs advisor to ReRoute the Route, John Sitilides, said the nearly $64 million should be spent on something else.
"Because Texas is not Japan or China or Europe, the Texas Legislature prohibits wasting a single state taxpayer dollar on this boondoggle's severe public hazards," he said in a statement to Houston Public Media. "The White House would better spend that $64 million to build or repair schools, hire hundreds of border patrol agents, or deliver health care to thousands of veterans in need."
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