TX: Dallas-Houston bullet train gets tentative timeline, but leaders aren’t ‘ready to say go’

A long-discussed Dallas-to- Houston bullet train still does not have a final timeline or financing, though the company behind the effort insists the project is still viable.

The vision for a high-speed rail line to shuttle passengers between the two cities in about 90 minutes, put forward by private company Texas Central, has faced many delays and leadership changes since it was announced a decade ago.

Andy Gent, a Texas Central representative, told Texas House Transportation Committee members that the latest shifts — including a decision by the Trump administration to pull $64 billion in federal funding to project partner Amtrak — would not derail the project.

The Department of Transportation’s announcement Monday signaled to Texas Central that the public rail provider would no longer lead the effort, a move project leaders say they agree with.

“So what happens with Amtrak, and…a federalization of the project is it comes with a lot of so-called red tape that must take place on the procurement side,” Gent said.

“Amtrak, because of the process, has to go rebid the work. So I think what the Department of Transportation is saying, and we agree with, is they don’t want them spending the money in the way in which Amtrak was proposing to spend it,” he added.

“We think Amtrak’s under a lot of pressure, just generally, with the Trump administration, and so we support what the Department of Transportation is saying.”

Committee members issued a subpoena earlier this month to Texas Central ordering them to provide information about the project during a hearing on House Bill 2003, which would force the company to share project information with the state regularly.

‘Shovel ready’

Though lawmakers applauded the company’s efforts to bring forward the requested information Thursday, several expressed frustration that some questions remain unanswered.

Many of Texas Central’s financials are in flux following Kleinheinz Capital Partners, led by Texas investor John Kleinheinz, taking over as lead investor of the project after the buyout of Japanese investors in January.

Gent also had little new information to share about a final timeline for the project, which Kleinheinz called “shovel-ready” in a statement Monday.

“We’re not prepared to say go, but the schedule would look as follows if we said go: We think it’ll roughly take six months to complete the kind of finalization of the planning effort…and that involves relooking at the road, relooking at the utilities, and relooking at all the disruption that’s going to take place over the 240-mile segment,” Gent said.

“During that time period, we would be working on the financing, we would be working on the application for the Surface Transportation Board final permit, and we would anticipate that we could get that stuff done, let’s say by the end of this year,” the representative added.

“If all of that stuff is approved by the end of this year, the build schedule we think will take between 80 and 86 months.”

The North Central Texas Council of Governments on Tuesday said that changes at Texas Central, including the pulling of federal funds, won’t immediately impact the council’s plans to advance a shorter Dallas-to- Fort Worth higher-speed rail route planners hope would connect to the Dallas- Houston line.

“In 20 years, the region will be 12.5 million people, and…I can’t imagine a region of 12.5 million people without a high-speed rail line down the backbone of that particular corridor,” said Michael Morris, transportation director at NCTCOG.

But plans for a regional line only “make sense” in connection to the Dallas- Houston route, Morris said.

“Dallas-Fort Worth all on its own can only happen with some huge interest on the economic development [side],” Morris said.

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