Amtrak leader urges momentum on Dallas-to-Houston high-speed rail

DALLAS – The Dallas Morning news reports that booming demand, Texas’s rapidly expanding population and growing political will have converged to create the right environment to move high-speed rail ahead, Amtrak leadership said Tuesday. Andy Byford, Amtrak’s senior vice president of high-speed rail development, told participants of the 20th annual Southwestern Rail Conference in Hurst that the Dallas-to-Houston corridor “ticks all the boxes” for a high-speed rail project. It would connect two large population centers, it has straightforward topography and “suboptimal alternatives” for travel, pointing to congestion on Interstate 45 and area airports. “If you put together all those characteristics, and then you figure out okay, which route would you build? There’s one that really stands out, and that is Dallas to Houston,” Byford said.

The proposed train would shuttle passengers from Dallas to Houston in about 90 minutes compared to the three-and-a-half-hour car trip on Interstate 45. Texas Central Partners, developers of the project, plan to model the bullet train after partner Japan Central Railways’ Shinkansen system. Amtrak announced last fall that it would explore a partnership with Texas Central to move the project forward, and it was awarded $500,000 for planning and development from the federal Corridor Identification and Development Program. The grant is a sliver of the estimated tens of billions needed to complete the project. The U.S. Department of Transportation and Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism welcomed Amtrak leadership of the rail project following a State Dinner between President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida last week. Byford was not present at the meeting but said there is “huge interest” in the project among Japanese and American leadership. “I did have a meeting with Secretary Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, and he said he himself is very committed to the project, that the president himself is very committed to the project,” Byford said.