Amtrak's high-speed rail in Texas advances with no guarantee of success

Houston to Dallas in 90 minutes. A 240-mile trip, with "convenient departures" every half-hour, that could shave more than two hours off the weekly car commute undertaken by some 100,000 Texans. That's the promise of high-speed rail in Texas.

The Amtrak project received a $63.9 million boost in recent weeks in a grant from the Federal Railroad Administration. The total cost would amount to about $30 billion, according to the Dallas Business Journal. The railroad joined the private Texas Central Railway's initiative in 2016.

The Houston station would be located on the grounds of the Northwest Mall, while the Dallas stations would be in the Cedars neighborhood. Between the two, there would be only one stop, Grimes County.

"Why Dallas to Houston? Something like the fifth and sixth fastest growing metropolis in the States," Andy Byford, Amtrak's top official in charge of high-speed rail, explained in a corporate video.

The poor transportation alternatives, he added, are another incentive: about Interstate 45 he says, "very crowded and quite dangerous," and although he recognizes that "a lot of people" make the trip by plane, he argues that "to be fair it’s really kind of too short to fly" and that it takes more time than necessary, especially if you add going to the airport, going through the controls and waiting for boarding.

Another key to the project is in Japanese: Shinkansen. The "legendary bullet train" that already runs on the tracks in Japan will be in charge of doing the same in the 240 miles that separate the North American cities.

The “Train Daddy,” as Byford was nicknamed when he worked for New York City, says enthusiastically that he has ridden trains in France, Spain, Italy and more, but the one that "always stands out" is the Japan’s.

When Americans try it, he assures, they'll think "we should have had this years ago." He ensures: "It’s fantastic, bring it on."

Not everyone shares his enthusiasm.

An unsure fate

"The federal budget deficit approaches $2 trillion, our national debt exceeds $35 trillion, and the White House is wasting scarce federal taxpayer dollars on this controversial, failing, insolvent and foolish $40 billion Amtrak pork project," John Sitilides, an advisor to the coalition against the use of public funds for the ReRoute project, told The Daily Caller.

The money, he adds, would be better spent on building schools, hiring police officers or providing medical care to veterans.

Another controversy surrounding the project is the land through which the tracks will pass. In early 2022, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that private land could be expropriated for construction of the project, as local media outlet Dallas Innovates reported at the time. ReRoute The Route protested the decision, asserting that it infringed on private property and that the project was insolvent, since despite presenting itself as a private initiative it was receiving billions of taxpayer dollars.

Congressmen Jake Ellzey and Michael McCaul have also been opposed for years. In a letter to the Federal Railroad Administration late last year, they called for denying it public support because, in short: "This project is intended to take land from American citizens and put it under the control of a Japanese company, which is itself subsidized using money from U.S. taxpayers."

"The project has received fierce pushback from rural landowners as well as county and local governments along the proposed route," they also wrote. They further recalled that the initial proposal was that the project would be "an exclusively privately funded venture."

The project is in its initial stages. If everything moves forward as Amtrak and Texas Central want, it will follow the path of the high-speed train that will connect Las Vegas with Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. In April, the project began with the goal of being operational for the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028.