This is exciting news. It looks like high-speed rail travel is finally coming to this country, and the first line is going to be built in Texas. Here is part of how Vagney Bradley reports it in The Pasadena Citizen:
Texas does big things. Texas Central Partners, LLC (Texas Central), a private company that is leading the bullet train project coming to Texas, is developing a new high-speed passenger rail system that will connect Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth. Texas Central held a railroad update Tuesday, June 7 at the Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce. The bullet train will be the first high-speed rail the country has ever seen. Travel time on the train will be 90 minutes between Houston and Dallas with one stop in between in the Brazos Valley area. The high-speed rail will be beneficial to the nearly 50,000 Texans who travel back and forth between Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth more than once a week. The bullet train is Japanese technology that Texas Central will be purchasing. The technology is one of the safest in the world. The train has never had a crash or fatality due to operations and has been running for over 50 years in Japan. The train has moved tens of billions of people every year, and the average annual delay is less than one minute. “The train never crosses a road, and there are no cars waiting on trains. Also there are no trains intersecting the cars, and no whistles or horn on the train,” said Holly Reed, managing director of external affairs at Texas Central. “That’s how you get reliability and safety. There’s one track going north and one track going south, so you never have trains going opposite directions.” Out of 97 city pairs studied across the nation, Houston/Dallas came out on top as the most feasible place for the high-speed rail project to be deployed. Texas Central believes the Houston/Dallas city pair is the best option for the train because there is growth in both cities and demand going in both directions. Also, the path is straight and relatively flat and far enough apart for the high-speed rail project.
There will be approximately 10,000 jobs per year for creating and building the high-speed rail project. Once the train is in full operation, there will be 1,000 new high-tech jobs. . . Texas Central describes the high-speed rail project as reliable, convenient, comfortable and productive. There will be a $10 billion direct project investment through 2040 and $36 billion in cumulative project impact (including indirect investment) through 2040. The estimated tax revenue impact is $2.5 billion cumulative tax revenue to be paid by Texas Central. “The project is privately financed, and it will take no government’s operating subsidies and no grants for construction. Any entity that the project touches will pay taxes into that,” said Reed. “So, it is different than most public infrastructure projects where we have done public projects and partnerships. It is a private endeavor, and it will pay taxes.” The first full year of operations is projected to be in 2022. . . Texas Central’s goal is to break ground on the nation’s first high-speed rail at the end of next year.
