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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
High-Speed Drama: Texas Central
The saga of high-speed rail in Texas takes another dramatic turn as the Trump administration revokes $60 million in funding previously allocated to Amtrak for the Texas Central project. Despite this setback, we explore why the Dallas-Houston line might actually be closer to reality than ever before.
• Texas high-speed rail initiatives date back to the 1990s when Southwest Airlines played a significant role in derailing early efforts
• Texas Central, the current iteration of the project, would connect Dallas to Houston in 90 minutes using trains capable of 205 mph
• After years of lawsuits, Texas Central gained crucial eminent domain authority by being classified as a utility
• Amtrak briefly took over the project in 2024 before Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pulled federal funding
• A private investment firm, Kleinheinz Capital Partners, has stepped in as lead investor just one day after federal funding was withdrawn
• The project could potentially be finalized by year-end with construction taking approximately 80-86 months
• Despite organized opposition groups like "Texans Against High Speed Rail," the project now has all legal frameworks in place
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Speaker 1:Is high speed rail in Texas dead after the Trump administration just revoked over $60 million in funding, or is the project actually closer to happening now than it ever was before? We'll break down the history of high-speed rail proposals in Texas, recent news on the topic and where things stand today coming up on Transit Tangents. Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis and I'm Chris, and today we are going to be covering a topic that has very much been in the news the last couple weeks. Here we're going to be mostly focusing on Texas Central, which is the high-speed rail project that has had a very big rollercoaster history over the last 30 years. Basically, this is high-speed rail connecting Dallas to Houston, one of the many, many, many things kind of caught up in all of the chaos surrounding the Trump administration, with some things being on and then off and this being legal and then illegal, and it's been very chaotic, to say the least.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chaos is definitely the theme of the year, and so we do want to say we recognize that there is a lot of bad stuff happening right now out there in the country and a lot of it is being driven by Trump, and we recognize that this is not the worst thing out there and the worst issue. So please don't take it that way. But we're trying not to be overly political on the podcast, so we're going to keep it transit-focused for this one and get into the discussion about Texas high-speed rail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, while a lot of the headlines have kind of been surrounding that, like you know, Texas Central is now dead after grant funding for kind of getting things back on track with Amtrak has been cut and Amtrak is no longer part of the process. We'll get into the details of that a little bit later. I actually do think that there is a glimmer of hope in that this project isn't fully dead. So stick around, We'll kind of get into some kind of breaking news.
Speaker 1:There was an article I read that came out this morning. We're recording this on Friday, April 18th. It came out this morning. That left me slightly more optimistic than I was a few days ago hearing this news. But to kind of start off, we're going to give you an idea. We're going to go over the history of all of the initiatives for Texas High Speed Rail Amtrak's involvement, how Sean Duffy, the new Transportation Secretary, has kind of been reacting to this, as well as the private partner that is seemingly taking over the project. So to kind of kick off the history segment here, the formalized concept of high speed rail in Texas, believe it or not, started with the creation of the Texas High Speed Rail Authority, which was formed in the Texas legislature, believe it or not, started with the creation of the Texas high speed rail authority, which was formed in the Texas legislature.
Speaker 2:At that time the legislature was a little bit more balanced between Republicans and Democrats, and when this was first introduced as the Texas high speed rail authority, it had bipartisan support.
Speaker 1:Which, again, if you know anything about the Texas legislature today, they are wildly anti-transit for the most part, to the point where you know we've kind of covered it before. If you look back at any of our episodes speaking with folks from the Dallas area transit alliance and whatnot, there's a lot going on there.
Speaker 2:And now a complete imbalance of power. Yes, absolutely, which we'll not get?
Speaker 1:into in this one. No, no, no. But anyway, the Texas High Speed Rail Authority was formed and it actually started receiving bids from companies around the world, from countries around the world including in Spain and France and all these places that had actually been building high speed rail at the time to actually complete this project. Now, if you know anything about the history of this, weirdly an airline comes into play here. I wouldn't even say weirdly.
Speaker 2:It just makes sense that an airline would come into play here. It does Because, like you hear this all the time you hear like one of the biggest lobbying groups against high speed rail in the country are airlines. And I do believe it because, especially where airlines make their money on some short flights, like short distance flights, those could easily be replaced with trains Right, and at the time Southwest Airlines had a major emphasis.
Speaker 1:They still do today in Texas, specifically in the Texas Triangle, with a lot of flights between Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio.
Speaker 2:It's how it literally started. On their napkins on the plane, they show you where they sketched out the initial route and it was like San Antonio, dallas, houston, san Antonio.
Speaker 1:So Southwest Airlines, being the entirely good faith actors that they were in this, had a lot of sway in the Texas legislature at this point and they used that power to essentially help to choose which partner was going to be selected to actually go ahead and build this. And, being the good faith partner that they are, of course, they went ahead and chose somebody who would be entirely reliable and able to go ahead and build this. So I actually found an article that is going to explain it better than we will, so I'll actually go ahead and read it. This is from Fast Company from about a year and a half ago, kind of giving a little bit of a history of this. So, quote they were not real excited about the project because at that time, in 1990, the Texas market was a much bigger part of their financial underpinnings than it is today, said Alan Rutter, a research scientist at the Texas Transportation Institute who served as the Texas High-Speed Rail Authority's deputy executive director in the 1990s.
Speaker 1:A Southwest spokesperson said the airline doesn't take issue at all with high-speed rail projects. Quote Southwest has yet to identify a rail project that has not collapsed under its own financial weight without taxpayer subsidies. The spokesperson said in a statement Back in 1994, the French company that won the Texas high-speed rail franchise, train-a-grand-vitesi, definitely saying that wrong. You know you are taking German and not French, not French correct yes and Vitesse definitely saying that wrong.
Speaker 1:You know, you are taking German and not French. Not French, correct?
Speaker 2:yes, Failed to meet a financial deadline and shortly thereafter, with no operator. The state's high-speed rail movement petered out.
Speaker 1:Womp womp Using your sound effect Womp womp. Yeah, so not the best scenario to play out there. And yeah, I mean they don't come out right out and say it. But essentially Southwest Airlines did what they could to make sure that this project would never get off the ground.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think it's far-fetched to believe that if we had had high-speed rail finished in the 90s between Houston and Dallas, we would have had at least another line to Austin San Antonio or Austin San Antonio Dallas. Yeah, I think Texas would be probably pretty close in population and GDP to California.
Speaker 1:I think so too, and I can't help but think about how those cities would have developed differently as well, the impacts it would have had on those cities' public transit systems, especially back then. I mean, Texas was growing back then, but it would have beat the hyper growth that we've seen in the last decade or so. It'd be an entirely different place. It's a little sad to think about actually.
Speaker 2:But it could be the future, we'll see.
Speaker 1:Very well, it's never too late to kind of go through and do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely not. So all of this happened in the 90s. The project sort of flopped right. High-speed rail has still continued to be part of the conversation for a very long time. Politics obviously have shifted in the state of Texas. We're now a very Republican state and the Republicans today are a little more anti-transit. However, the latest project, which we now call Texas Central, was introduced about 12 years ago and would still follow the same path Houston to Dallas, with a stop in the Brazos Valley and then maybe a spur to Austin. It's on some plans. Sometimes it's not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for the initial trend, texas Central it's mostly just Houston to Dallas. I don't think there's going to be any serious discussion about the others, although we did have a really great conversation on a previous episode with Travis County, which is where Austin is located, the Travis County judge, andy Brown, who has been kind of spearheading efforts, meeting with other county officials, city officials in multiple cities throughout Texas about more rail initiatives, including rail between Austin and San Antonio to Dallas and whatnot. So there is a movement there, but Texas Central is much further along, we'll say, than the others. The exciting thing about Texas Central too I mean the plans during this era talked about using Shinkansen trains for real high-speed rail with speeds up to 205 miles per hour, which is amazing.
Speaker 2:It would be awesome.
Speaker 1:Would essentially connect Dallas to Houston in about 90 minutes, versus. If you just kind of look at Google Maps at a random time, the drive time is somewhere around three and a half hours, Although I'm sure that that, with us having a lot of experience recently driving back and forth to Dallas, we had a what should be a what three hour trip to Dallas Should be about three hours and it took us five.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was. It's not not great. So the your your results may vary on the highway at three and a half hours, whereas your results in a high speed train is basically going to be 90 minutes every time. So also.
Speaker 2:Texas geography is just set up for a high speed train. We don't have seismic activity. The land, especially in this part of Texas, is incredibly flat, and so you can essentially make a straight line. Also, this land between Houston and Dallas is pretty rural as well. So, yes, you're going to have small towns that are going to be impacted, but for the most part, you're going through farmland.
Speaker 1:Right, and while you would think that that would not cause a lot of controversy, it is actually kind of what hampered a lot of this along the way. Texas Central, from the start, was just lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit, a lot of it in regards to landowners and whatnot, kind of along the way.
Speaker 2:Texas has very strong property rights laws, and so eminent domain, especially outside of the larger cities, is incredibly difficult.
Speaker 1:Yes, To give a little bit of a timeline on Texas Central, though. So this is kind of like phase two of the Texas high-speed rail initiatives, the first one being what we kind of first explained, which was killed by Southwest Airlines. This is kind of phase two, so this was really kind of got started around 2013, 2014, where you had these proposals coming forward and believe it or not, I actually didn't know this until when I was pulling the research together on this this was actually in 2017, listed as a priority under the new, at the time, trump administration during his first term, as one of the kind of transportation projects that they wanted to happen as part of, you know, the infrastructure bill that famously never happened, so ultimately didn't get done right then at the time, from 2017 to 2020. There were tons of designs and then a build contract, and then something changes and another lawsuit, and it was just very much in limbo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and like the lawsuits in Texas, a lot of it was over the eminent domain. It took a ruling by a Texas judge to declare that Texas Central as a railroad authority is technically a utility, which gave them the ability to purchase property instead of just being a private company purchasing property. So a lot of hurdles they had to overcome.
Speaker 1:Right, absolutely. Unfortunately, even though they eventually did get that eminent domain authority after there was the Texas Supreme Court that actually went up to in that case, it wasn't enough. At the end of 2022, the CEO of Texas Central stepped down and things just went quiet, very quiet. Nothing happened for a while, which was pretty interesting for it to get this new authority. At that point, they just kind of lose steam.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then about that time we did see a little rumbling of discussion when Amtrak entered the conversation. This was in 2023. They began looking into the project and by 2024 Amtrak officially took it over and gave an estimate of about 30 billion dollars to build this out. This would have been huge. It would have been their first real high-speed project. Their higher-speed project is the Acela in the Northeast, so this would have been a great sort of intro for Amtrak to try high-speed at that time.
Speaker 1:Totally, and there was a lot of discussion back and forth and eventually, in September of 2024, a $64 million grant was allocated to essentially revive the project and have Amtrak fully take it on. Now, obviously, that $64 million is not the $30 billion to build it, but it is, you know, essentially to get operational again as a business, because again in 2022, it kind of fizzled out.
Speaker 2:And also the $30 billion sounds like a lot, but like, how much do we spend on highway maintenance in this state? It's insane right, it's insane.
Speaker 1:We won't even blink spending $10 billion on much smaller segments of highway in Texas On just building an intersection.
Speaker 1:Exactly. So right, that's. A good point to point out is that in Texas, we're willing to spend that kind of money all the time. Actually, I want to look at what is the amount that they spend every year. All right, so I looked it up and this was from 2022. Txdot spent $18 billion in 2022 alone. This project is going to take years to build and $30 billion for the upfront investment. It's not bad at all, considering it would be connecting the two largest cities in the state of Texas.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so it is 2025. And where does this project stand now? Well, it is still a roller coaster of twists and turns and changes that we did not expect. For this year, amtrak did initiate an RFQ process for building Texas Central, did initiate an RFQ process for building Texas Central. Rfq, for those who aren't familiar, is a request for qualifications, request for sorry, I feel like I said koalifications, koalifications, koalifications, damn it. Oh, I have an image of a koala with a hard hat and like a hammer. What that means is that companies will sort of submit their qualifications and sort of a history of if they've been able to build these projects, what it would take to do this. It's not quite a request for proposal stage, which is a little bit more serious, where you're actually ready to give out a contract.
Speaker 1:This is sort of the pre-stage to that Right and people who make it through this RFQ process. Then we'll be able to submit an RFP to be able to actually build the project we got through it Chris, we got through it.
Speaker 2:Koalas and all.
Speaker 1:So in February, when this announcement was made, it was big news, I mean, at the time, amtrak making this announcement, that they're opening this up.
Speaker 1:It's like Amtrak is getting ready to build its own rail project under the Trump administration which, if you've listened to us, I mean we've kind of been talking about the fact that you know, at best Amtrak is going to just kind of stay flat over the next few years.
Speaker 1:They're not going to get any new investment, but like we're optimistic that things weren't going to be cut, I don't know anymore what the heck is going on there, but we were saying that you know, if there was going to be any rail expansion in the United States, it was going to come from the private industry. And here was Amtrak announcing that they were taking these steps forward and a large account online that I'm sure many of you are familiar with Yimbyland. A lot of people love them, a lot of people hate them. People have strong feelings about Yimbyland, as we've learned. But Yimbyland tweets this out and it goes super viral on Twitter and everyone's going crazy and talking about this and all of a sudden, the Yimbyland tweet about this, with the kind of press release from Amtrak, gets a reply from Elon Musk with.
Speaker 2:I don't know what the name of this emoji is, but it's kind of the like putting your what don't know what the name of this emoji is, but it's kind of the like putting your what would you call it Like a thinking emoji.
Speaker 1:A thinking emoji a skeptical emoji, skeptical emoji and people start to lose it. The discourse Even Yimbyland at the time posted something along the lines saying like either A I just made sure that this project is going to happen, or B I just killed it. What are the other? And folks went wild with this and we basically didn't hear anything for a little about six weeks until literally last week from when we were recording this on.
Speaker 2:April 14th. Yeah, so then on April 14th, sean Duffy our not BFF Reston Pete, our not BFF transportation secretary, put out a press release, effectively killing Texas Central at least killing Amtrak's involvement in Texas Central. Now Amtrak's already going through a lot. Right now. The head of Amtrak has stepped down, there's all the discussions about privatization and everything else that's happening. So, like you said, we knew that this wasn't necessarily going to come from Amtrak until they started talking about it, but now it definitely seals the deal. Sean Duffy, in his press conference, put out a quote that said that this was a waste of taxpayer funds and a distraction from Amtrak's core mission of improving its existing subpar service. Wow, that's a lot of faith in our rail network from our secretary of transportation. I can't talk today. Yeah, it's so frustrating. It is so frustrating because Amtrak, by all metrics, is doing very well and has continued to look toward expansion and it's all being cheered. Amtrak is looking toward a profitable future.
Speaker 1:Things are trending in the right direction.
Speaker 2:There is hope there and the way we get there is by more funding of Amtrak and investing in it. Of course, they're going to have subpar service if we're not investing in it.
Speaker 1:Right, yes, and when this came out, people were obviously very disappointed. A lot of big transit accounts online and folks who work in the space and whatnot are all kind of saying Texas Central is dead. Hilariously, a lot of blame is being placed on yimby land online, which is insane, like okay, maybe like it put it on elon musk's radar, but I guarantee you know it was going to come up in the administration's radar right. Um, just kind of a funny little anecdote there.
Speaker 2:That's not like the main point of this, but it is pretty funny um and see I took it as elon musk, looking at it and saying, hmm, maybe I can build a Tesla tunnel.
Speaker 1:We don't need to talk about Tesla. Actually, we need to do a. I would like to go to Vegas and ride in the silly little tube, just to go see it. We can laugh and point at it. Anyway, everyone generally is saying this is dead, this is dead. This is dead Literally the next day after April 14th.
Speaker 2:Since.
Speaker 1:April 15th, a new plan essentially emerges and we had this article from the Fort Worth report. I'm going to just read it from it. Kleinheinz Capital Partners Inc. Of Fort Worth, the lead investor in Texas Central, said it was quote proud to have stepped in as the private sector sponsor of the Texas High Speed Rail and today's announcement is good news for the overall project. We agree with Secretary Duffy that the project should be led by the private sector sponsor of the Texas High Speed Rail and today's announcement is good news for the overall project. We agree with Secretary Duffy that the project should be led by the private sector and we'll be proud to take it forward. The company said in a statement.
Speaker 1:The project is shovel-ready and will create significant new jobs and economic growth for Texas as part of President Trump's efforts to boost the US economy. So a private partner is now involved again in this project. So to kind of recap, I mean it was kind of a public-private-y thing back in the 90s. It was then a private industry push earlier, then it was Amtrak. Now we're back to private to kind of complete the roller coaster.
Speaker 1:So far, something tells me there'll be more bumps in this road. So pretty interesting that you know a day apart, this private partner is there. That kind of does tell me that maybe there was a discussion ahead of time as they were doing this, again not surprising at all to either of us. I don't think that the Trump administration is leaning more towards a private company to do this versus doing it via Amtrak. But if I'm being honest, I was like pretty skeptical about it. But an article that came out literally this morning I noticed it as I was kind of putting finishing touches on this from Mass Transit Magazine left me feeling a little bit more optimistic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there were quotes from the Texas Central rep that said things could get finalized by the end of the year, followed by a certain period of a construction period.
Speaker 2:So we're just going to go ahead and read this article. 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 looking at the road, looking at the utilities and looking at all of the disruption that's going to take place over the 240 mile segment. And that was from gint. Who's the representative from texas central. During that time period we would be working on the financing, we'd be working on the application for the surface transportation board final permit and we would anticipate that we can get that stuff done, let's say by the end of the 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. So essentially in six months they think they can pull together the financing and finalize the plans which like that does sound pretty optimistic to me.
Speaker 1:Now he did say like we're not ready to say go right now, so like that end of the year timeline, probably not there, unless they finally you know, I would call that not shovel ready, yeah, yeah I agree, I would say not shovel ready. Yes, that's a that's a good point. But I will say, though there has been so much freaking planning for this project, like they should be pretty close now you were saying earlier like they do not own all of the land yet about 30 30%.
Speaker 1:Right, but they do have this. If it's still all happening under Texas Central, they do have eminent domain authority. So hypothetically, I mean there will be more lawsuits. Of course, that's like the story of every transit project in the United States at this point, which is ridiculous. But they hypothetically have all the tools that they need. Yeah, they have the courts backing, yeah. So they hypothetically have all the tools that they need. Yeah, they have the courts backing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't really need the legislature at this point, unless the legislature tries to step in and kill this. Yeah, they have the financing apparently. Yeah, they have models to look at, like Brightline and other projects in the country that are on time and doing well, so it seems like all of the ingredients may finally be there. Right, this seems closer today than maybe it seemed at any other point that we've talked about this, or maybe in the last 15 years.
Speaker 1:Yes and no. I mean, I think that there was a point, like during the end of the Biden administration, where, like Amtrak had just gotten the $64 million grant and whatnot, that if it were going to happen that way it could happen, and I do think that had Kamala Harris won the election, there could be a plan moving forward with Amtrak here. Obviously, that is not reality, and what is reality is that this is now kind of under this private model. Now I do think that the Trump administration is going to want to point to projects that were done by the private industry, that got done in a reasonable time frame, and I think Brightline West is one of them, that they're already kind of queuing up. Not that they were the ones who got that started or anything, it obviously wasn't. It was, you know, a lot of money passed through the Biden administration.
Speaker 1:But they're going to tap private industry on this Exactly and I think that they're going to want to see it succeed. And I think they're going to want to see Brightline West succeed. I think that this is another one they're going to want to see succeed so that they can point to it and say look at this compared to California high-speed rail. As much as I don't want them to just continue picking on California high-speed rail we've done our fair share of picking on California high-speed rail, everyone has but I think that they're going to want to see this succeed. So it could be a good thing for the project, which is a long way to get there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree it's a long way to get there. It's not necessarily the way I wanted to see this play out, but if this is the way it happens and it finally actually happens, fine, all for it. Yeah, let's just get it done. That's the biggest thing, because as soon as we can get Austin or, excuse me, as soon as we can get Houston to Dallas done and it looks feasible, then a spur to Austin or, you know, san Antonio, to Dallas or something, is that much more feasible.
Speaker 2:So, totally you know what? Let's just get it done. If it's shovel ready I will go buy the shovel Right, let's just go start breaking ground.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. And again, I think you know it is really exciting what this could lead to because, like you said, once you see this stretch under construction, the rest of texas is going to want a part of it as well. I do think it would lead to, you know, options of like actually completing a texas triangle or texas t-bone. There's a whole lot of different opportunities out there. There are government officials who are excited about those things happening. Like we mentioned, we've talked with uh travis, county judge andy. There are other representatives in cities in San Antonio and Austin and Dallas and elsewhere who want this to happen. So I think getting this done will be there.
Speaker 1:But actually I haven't shown you this. We'll kind of end it on this, but I don't know, because there are groups that are just being formed fully to be like Texans against high speed rail. I saw this on Twitter the other day from Urban Cowboy on Twitter We'll put a link to the tweet here and he just said how is this even real? And it is at the statehouse Texans Against High Speed Rail had a table set up the other day, so pretty wild that these groups exist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty gross.
Speaker 2:Why wild that these groups exist? Yeah, pretty gross. Why, like what's? Why do you roll out of bed and say you know what I want?
Speaker 1:to do? I want to make sure people can't get around. Yep, like it's just dumb. I want people to be forced to only get around by a car. I don't want people to have freedom of choice. That's. That's where I think we should kind of we can kind of wrap this one up. So long long story short. Texas Central High Speed Rail in Texas has had a very rocky roller coaster ride. That ride is still continuing. We'll kind of keep folks updated on this project and see ultimately where it goes.
Speaker 2:By the end of it, maybe it is a roller coaster ride. Just get a Six Flags straight shot roller coaster.
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