By Adam Zuvanich with Houston Public Media
The national passenger railroad company of the United States, which has taken the lead on a long-planned high-speed railway between Texas’ two largest cities, continues to explore the initiative but also promoted the idea in a video released this week.
The plan for the 240-mile route between the state’s two largest cities, first hatched about a decade ago and recently buoyed by support from Amtrak and political leaders in both the United States and Japan, calls for using Japanese Shinkansen technology in which trains move as fast as 205 mph. Passengers would be able to travel between Houston and Dallas in a matter of about 90 minutes.
“People are just going to be blown away when they experience that. I have been lucky enough to go to Japan and ride it,” Amtrak senior vice president Andy Byford, who leads its high-speed rail development program, said in a Monday video posted on Amtrak’s X account. “The average speed (between Houston and Dallas) will be about 187 mph, which currently would be the fastest average speed in the world.”
The 4-minute video featuring Byford and Amtrak president Roger Harris appears to signal that the national passenger railroad company for the U.S. is committed to seeing the project through, even though Byford cautioned at a Dallas-area rail conference in mid-April that the Texas bullet train was not a “done deal.” He said then that Amtrak continues to use $500,000 in federal grant funding to explore a partnership with Texas Central, the private company that came up with the idea and moved it forward before appearing to stall out in 2022, and will do so for about another 18 months before making a final decision.
But in Monday’s video, Byford said the Houston-to-Dallas route “stands out” as the most feasible and viable corridor in the country for high-speed rail. The video ends with Harris saying, “Let’s go make it happen.”
The video is premature “puffery,” according to John Sitilides, a Washington D.C.-based federal affairs advisor for ReRoute the Route, a coalition of business and civic leaders in Texas that is against the high-speed rail project as currently proposed because the planned path cuts through farm and ranch land instead of being along the existing Interstate 45 corridor that connects Houston and Dallas. He also said Amtrak is sending mixed messages.
“(Byford) says, and I think rightfully so, that he is very open-minded about the project,” Sitilides said. “He’s looking to learn as much as he can about the project. After they complete their due diligence, they’ll decide whether or not this is a project with which to proceed. But then they issue these types of promotional videos which seem to belie those statements, and it seems as if they’re all in.”
Byford said in the video that the Houston-to-Dallas corridor “ticks all the boxes” for high-speed rail because they are large and fast-growing population centers and have relatively flat topography between them. He also said the other traveling options between the two cities are sub-optimal – driving on often-congested I-45 or flying on airplanes.
Along with having the support of President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a high-speed railway between Houston and Dallas also has been backed by local elected officials in each city and economic development organizations such as the Greater Houston Partnership. It also has the support of the American Public Transportation Association, with its president and CEO Paul P. Skoutelas telling Houston Public Media in a statement that the “time is now to make transformational investment in our national infrastructure that will provide staying power to drive our economy for years to come.”
“The Dallas-Houston corridor indeed has the characteristics that make a corridor ripe for high-speed passenger rail service,” he added. “It also represents a unique public-private partnership. APTA believes that the transportation investments of today will be the foundation of a forward-looking strategy to establish safe, reliable, efficient, integrated, and climate-friendly alternatives for moving people. America has an opportunity to build a high-performance rail network to position us to overcome economic challenges and compete in the global marketplace in the coming years.”
Before longtime Texas Central CEO Carlos Aguilar resigned in 2022 after land acquisitions and fundraising had slowed, the Dallas-based company secured federal approval for the proposed route and the high-speed technology to be used. Also, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that Texas Central had the legal authority to acquire land through eminent domain.
Byford said in mid-April that about 30% of the land needed has been secured for the project, which he estimated will cost at least $30 billion. Further land acquisition amidst opposition by some rural property owners along the route, broad political support and a mix of private and public funding sources will be required to see the bullet train initiative to fruition, he said.
The ability to secure more private funding will be a challenge, according to Sitilides, who said the project has many other flaws. He said the potential impacts on minority communities and conflicts with existing railways are among them, along with the fact that the planned stations in Houston and Dallas are not close to the airports in those regions and, in the case of Houston, not next to downtown.
“We just think that Amtrak is wasting federal taxpayer dollars by putting this first tranche … into these feasibility studies,” Sitilides said. “They’re probably chasing a rabbit hole here. They should be pursuing high-speed projects in other parts of the United States where the topography, the geography and the culture work in favor of high-speed rail. Mr. Byford may have had very good experiences in London, in New York and other major cities, but East Texas is basically car country.”
Byford, meanwhile, says in the video that he sees high-speed rail as the “way of the future” instead of traveling by automobile or airplane. He also described the Houston-to-Dallas corridor as the path that can lay the foundation for other high-speed rail routes around the country.
The video starts with Byford saying, “Let’s get on with it. Now is the magic word.”
Near the end of the video, he adds, “I think in coming years, once we’ve got high speed in on one, maybe two routes, what Americans will say in years to come is, ‘We should have had this years ago. It’s fantastic. Bring it on. Let’s have some more.'”
Article featured at https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/transportation/2024/04/30/485140/houston-dallas-bullet-train-amtrak-video-publicity-ramp-up/
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