Texas Transit Association

Previous proposals to bring high-speed rail to Texas were more or less top-down efforts meant as much to sell trains and rail cars as to move people around the state.

But the Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corp. is different. It brings together elected officials along possible rail corridors, and it emphasizes the movement of people.

High-speed rail in Texas
It’s time for the T-Bone
Editorial, Star-Telegram Feb. 29, 2004

We really haven’t been here before.

Equipment is essential, of course, but incidental.

Harris County Judge Robert Eckels is chairman. Tarrant County Commissioner Glen Whitley is secretary. Dallas County is represented. So is the Port of Houston, as are others along the way.

At the heart of the corporation’s proposal is the “Texas T-Bone.”

In 1992, Congress passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation and Efficiency Act; it included designated potential high-speed rail corridors, opening the possibility of federal assistance to test, study and build high-speed rail connections in those areas. The act was re-authorized as TEA-21 in 1998.

Two of the rail corridors are in Texas.

One links San Antonio, Austin, Waco and Fort Worth and Dallas along the spine of Interstate 35. That line would extend into Oklahoma and, as a sop to then-President Clinton, send an offshoot into Arkansas.

The second is along the Gulf Coast, linking Houston and New Orleans, then heading toward Atlanta and connecting eventually to a north-south corridor along the East Coast.

But that ignores the flow of people and goods in Texas. The T-Bone is an option that would connect Houston through Bryan-College Station to join the north-south corridor between San Antonio and the Metroplex at Temple — and, very importantly, Fort Hood.

The Houston-Fort Hood connection is called the Brazos Express Corridor, and members of the Texas congressional delegation have asked U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta to approve a proposal to add it to the envisioned corridors in Texas.

Timing is crucial because Congress is debating a six-year extension of the Transportation Equity Act.

There is a military and security aspect to the proposal. Linkage through the Texas T-Bone could make it easier for soldiers, equipment and supplies from Fort Hood to move more quickly through the ports in Beaumont or Houston to foreign trouble spots.

Building such a rail system linking Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Waco with Fort Worth-Dallas would not be cheap. Nor would it be profitable by itself. Transit systems earn their keep by the business they generate and not exclusively on the service they provide.

Transportation systems have been subsidized since the Romans built an extensive road system across their empire. They are an essential service that the public demands, is entitled to and is willing to fund.

“Transportation systems are all economic development programs,” said Eckels.

But a study by the Federal Railroad Administration suggested that a Houston-San Antonio-Dallas-Fort Worth linkup might generate revenues to cover nearly 43 percent of its operating costs — far better than the approximately 29 percent projected for high-speed rail overall.

That study was completed in 1996 on a proposal that would have required 764 miles of track. The Texas T-Bone option requires just 440 miles of right of way — and adds 350,000 to 400,000 more potential riders in the Brazos Valley.

Earlier proposals for high-speed rail collapsed in part because of objections from the state’s airlines. But that may not be the case this time.

One change is that the northern terminus of the line ends at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport with connections to Fort Worth and Dallas. Another difference between then and now is that the nation has seen a 27 percent reduction in short-haul flights — those of 250 miles or less — Texas included.

But high-speed rail could link airports in the state’s major cities with one another in less than an hour, becoming both a collector and distributor for Texas airlines and for local transit systems.

Code-sharing arrangements might make it possible to book into, say, Houston and depart from D/FW all on the same ticket, with the train fare included and the baggage checked all the way through.

“We see this as a link with the major airports,” said Tarrant County’s Whitley.

“By bringing it into D/FW, it puts us more on the scale of a truly international city or international airports,” he says, speaking of European airports that bring air and rail connections together.

Eckels notes that airlines with Houston and D/FW as hubs could use the rail to gather passengers along the corridors.

He says that U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, would like to see three federally funded demonstration projects on high-speed rail.

“Not to build them, but a $20 million to $25 million study to be done around the country,” Eckels says. “We’re trying to be one of those three studies.”

Designation of the T-Bone is crucial because the Texas proposal is very competitive in other ways.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst told Young in a letter that transportation is an important need in Texas.

“With increasing congestion on our state’s highways, delays at our major airports and population growth at twice the national average, it’s clear that we must seek creative solutions to our transportation problems and provide our constituents with a safe, economical and efficient alternative mode of transportation,” Dewhurst said.

Eckels expects one demonstration project on the East Coast and another on the West Coast.

“We’d like to be in the hunt for the third one,” he said.

That’s what should happen. The time is right — and the need is demonstrated daily on Texas’ increasingly choked interstate highways.