The illusive dream of high-speed rail in Texas has become foggier as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office and state GOP lawmakers intent on throwing up roadblocks to rail return to Austin next month.
Over the last two years, high-speed rail ambitions in Texas showed signs of life. Amtrak revived and took the lead on a long-mulled high-speed rail route between Dallas and Houston. North Texas transportation planners advanced the idea of extending that line to Fort Worth and Arlington. A glut of federal transportation dollars under President Joe Biden’s administration and increased congestion on Texas interstates pushed some local leaders to make the case for boosting even conventional passenger rail between the state’s major urban areas.
Where those efforts will go during a second Trump administration remains to be seen. Trump, rail advocates and experts say, has offered few clues about how he will approach high-speed rail during his second term — after the Biden administration backed federal financial support for expanding rail.
But in the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature, anti-rail efforts will likely persist when lawmakers convene in January.
Some rail backers still see reasons for hope. For one, congestion on Texas roadways amid the state’s robust economic growth has become interminable. Combine that with an expected $20 billion budget surplus, and state lawmakers could be amenable to exploring rail options, said Peter LeCody, who heads the organization Texas Rail Advocates.
“This might be a turning point where the Legislature is starting to wake up and smell the vehicle fumes,” LeCody said.
Some lawmakers are trying to lay the groundwork for a statewide high-speed rail expansion. A bill filed by State Rep. John Bucy, an Austin Democrat, would direct the Texas Department of Transportation to jumpstart a high-speed rail line between Dallas, Austin and San Antonio along the congested Interstate 35 corridor. The state agency would have to enter a comprehensive development agreement with a private company to build, maintain and operate the line, which would have to reach speeds of at least 110 miles per hour.
There are no immediate plans for such a train, Bucy said, and it’s not clear who would operate it.
Another Bucy bill would allow more state transportation dollars to be spent on high-speed rail as well as other modes of transportation like conventional passenger rail, bicycle lanes and walking paths. The Texas Constitution mandates that most of TxDOT’s budget must be spent on building and expanding freeways. If Bucy’s bill passes, Texas voters would decide whether to amend the constitution to allow a greater share of those dollars to be spent on transportation methods other than highways.
“We need to be able to move people,” Bucy said in an interview. “We need to give people other options.”
Still in question is the future of the long-sought Texas Central high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston. The project, first pitched in 2009, would shuttle passengers at top speeds above 200 miles per hour — turning what’s now a 3.5-hour commute by car to a 90-minute ride by train.
The line would use the same technology used on Japan’s famed high-speed rail network, which connects that country’s major job centers. A 16-car train there can hold more than 1,300 passengers at a time.
Amtrak revived the project last year following a leadership exodus from Texas Central, which had struggled to acquire land necessary to build the line. The route between Dallas and Houston checks a number of boxes that make it ideal for high-speed rail, Amtrak officials have said — namely that it connects two of the country’s largest metropolitan regions and is flat enough to allow trains to reach the velocity necessary to make the journey relatively speedy.
High-speed rail proposals have long faced a steep climb in the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature — where GOP lawmakers are hostile to passenger rail and have particularly sought to stop the Texas Central project. Texas Republicans — including Gov. Greg Abbott, who once heralded the Texas Central proposal — have sought to prevent state tax dollars from paying for high-speed rail and block efforts to seize the land needed to build it through eminent domain.
State legislators approved a law in 2017 intended to bar Texas Central from receiving state dollars to build high-speed rail.
“If the Texas Central line can be built without state or federal money, without taking private property, it’s fine with me,” said state Sen. Robert Nichols, an East Texas Republican who heads the state Senate Transportation Committee. “But the answer is ‘no, they can’t.’ … If it was an investment that would pay big dividends, that’s a whole different deal. That is not an investment that’s going to pay dividends. That is a big cost hole that is a bottomless pit.”
That opposition appears likely to persist next year. Republican legislators have introduced proposals to further enshrine obstacles to high-speed rail. A bill filed by state Rep. Cody Harris, a Palestine Republican, would forbid state lawmakers from appropriating funds to pay for anything related to high-speed rail operated by a private entity.
Another bill, by state Rep. Brian Harrison, a Waxahachie Republican, would reverse a 2022 Texas Supreme Court decision allowing Texas Central to seize land necessary to build the Dallas-to-Houston line — a decision that alarmed East Texas landowners in the route’s projected path.
“I am committed to protecting my constituents’ private property rights from the forced taking of their land for this wasteful boondoggle project,” Harrison said in a statement.
Just how those GOP proposals would affect the Texas Central line’s development now that Amtrak has taken the lead on the project — or the development of other high-speed rail lines — isn’t clear.
How the Texas Central line could be built without state dollars is difficult to imagine, rail advocates and experts said. The projected cost of the Dallas-to-Houston route is more than $30 billion, up from an earlier $12 billion estimate — money that would have to come from federal and private sources.
“This project needs tens of billions of dollars and we don’t appear to be close to that,” said Eric Goldwyn, program director at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University.
Andy Byford, senior vice president of high-speed rail development at Amtrak, said in November that officials are still figuring out how exactly to pay for the project, which hasn’t gained federal approval.
Byford told reporters earlier this year that Texas Central has acquired about 30% of the land needed to build the line but has maintained that acquiring the remaining land through eminent domain would be a last resort.
Officials pursuing a high-speed rail route connecting Dallas, Arlington and Fort Worth hope to do so entirely with private dollars. Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, said he expects private rail operators like Brightline — which owns a route that runs from Orlando to Miami and is pursuing a high-speed route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas — will take interest if the route gains federal approval.
Such a project would reduce congestion and improve safety on freeways while sprouting economic development in the form of housing, offices and restaurants near stations in each city, Morris said.
Separately, Morris said he plans to push state lawmakers to create a new state agency solely focused on high-speed rail efforts.
Another mystery is how Trump will approach passenger rail during his second term.
In his first term, Trump canceled more than $900 million in federal dollars to help pay for California’s beleaguered high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, funds that Biden would later reinstate. Vivek Ramaswamy — an entrepreneur Trump tapped to lead an effort alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk to slash government spending and pare federal regulations — this week called for ending federal support for the California line, which he dubbed a “wasteful vanity project.”
Trump struck a different tone on the campaign trail this year, openly wondering why the United States doesn’t have high-speed rail of its own.
“They go unbelievably fast, unbelievably comfortable with no problems, and we don’t have anything like that in this country. Not even close,” Trump said during a conversation with Musk hosted on the social media site X. “And it doesn’t make sense that we don’t, doesn’t make sense.”
Outside of high-speed rail, state and local officials are looking for ways to ease congestion on Texas’ increasingly busy interstates and give Texans another way to move around the state.
Using federal dollars, TxDOT is examining how to boost passenger rail service on an existing Amtrak route from Houston to San Antonio. State transportation planners also are studying how to reinstate a conventional Amtrak line between Houston and Dallas, a separate effort from the high-speed project.
Amid robust growth along the Interstate 35 corridor, officials in Travis and Bexar counties have restarted efforts to boost passenger rail frequency between the Austin and San Antonio regions.
Boosting any kind of passenger rail isn’t enough to ease overall congestion, Goldwyn said, adding that state and local officials should also back efforts to make urban areas more walkable and easier to traverse by bicycle or public transit.
Passenger rail “is one tool we can use to help solve that problem, but we need to do a lot of other things as well,” he said.
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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy.