Name: Can Amtrak Finally Bring High-Speed Rail To Texas?
Uploaded: 2026-03-21T18:35:06.000Z
Duration: 15 min 9 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The United States is in a race against time to upgrade its transportation system.

Modal verbs - B1

People 50 years ago didn't think about, well, maybe we should have had high speed rail in the United States long before now.

Adverbs of degree

Other parts of the world have certainly initiated high speed rail, a great benefit to them.

Federal planners see an opportunity to bring this service to Texas.

I would argue that the Texas Triangle is the lowest hanging fruit in the nation for improving intercity passenger rail service.

In 2014, a group named Texas Central made its bid to bring high speed rail to the Texas Triangle.

With bullet trains traveling at over 205 miles per hour, the goal was to connect Dallas to Houston in under 90 minutes.

You cannot do that in a car, you cannot do that if you fly.

If you factor in going to the airport, going through security, getting back in from the airport at the other end.

But after a decade of talk, little progress has been made.

The original pitch was to build this multibillion dollar megaproject with no taxpayer money until Amtrak announced a plan to revive the project late in 2023.

They are now in the process to getting the finance.

If they started construction, the total construction period, could it be seven or eight years.

But the backlash in Texas has deep roots and no signs of fading.

Soon, even if there's a situation where I am taken off the route, I will continue to fight for Texans.

With $66 billion in federal funds for passenger rail up for grabs, the project is poised for a revival.

And what will a high speed rail service mean for the millions of Texans in its path?

The race to bring high speed rail to the Texas Triangle dates back to 1987.

And we came so close that we got the legislation passed, we got the franchise awarded to the French.

Ben Barnes was an early investor in a project to build a system in Texas that would mimic France's TGV system.

In 1994, Southwest Airlines, who was the main opposition, Southwest Airlines spent $37 million and they did a very good job of convincing the Texas farmers that their cows were going to quit giving milk.

And all kinds of horror stories were going to happen if we had these electric trains running through Texas.

Today, most Texans use the state's 80,000 miles of highway to get around.

You know, our transportation system is just really trying to keep up with our population growth.

Commuters experience somewhere around 40 hours of delay a year.

The proposed high speed Rail line in Texas would connect Houston and Dallas, two of the biggest cities in the country.

I don't think you could come up with a better city pairing than Dallas to Houston.

The cities are in that sweet spot, the sweet spot you're looking for between 200 to 600, 800 miles.

Andy Byford joined Amtrak in 2023 to think strategically about high speed rail in the United States.

We think there are huge opportunities here.

And certainly the market research that has been done both pre and post Covid shows that there is a compelling business case that people want that convenience, that safety, that reliability of being able to in the future, potentially leave Dallas in the afternoon, go to Houston to watch the game, or maybe have dinner and still be back later that day.

Texas is probably about the most obvious or the one that would have the biggest return on investment because it takes a drive that can easily be six hours with a bit of traffic and reduces it to a downtown to downtown train ride in about 60 minutes.

Congressman Seth Moulton was previously a managing director at Texas Central from 2011 to 2012.

If you don't build high speed rail between Dallas and Houston, then you only have two options.

You're going to have to expand airports, or you're going to have to expand the highway, or you're going to have to do both.

If built, the Texas bullet train could eventually shuttle over 7 million passengers between Houston and Dallas each year.

That would take about 15,000 vehicles off the highway routes, or 14.5% of the expected daily traffic.

By 2035, the path for the bullet train is expected to alter 1700 parcels of land, like this farm on the outskirts of Dallas.

It's on the southern portion of Dallas, Texas.

The proposed bullet train would travel on elevated tracks.

The planners hope this will allow landowners and wildlife to cross its path.

Even with that concession, the project may remove thousands of acres of farmland.

It is actually set to go right over this house here.

Jodi Berry says her family has farmed this land for generations.

In the 2010s she became a member of Texans against high Speed Rail, a grassroots collective who has opposed Texas Central.

I mean, this thing's going to cut Madison county in half like it will every other county along the line.

We know the stories of the interstate highway tearing up neighborhoods, dividing cities, often going through neighborhoods with racial minorities.

High speed rail is very different because first of all, it's much less land.

One high speed rail line has the capacity of eight to 10 highway lanes.

So think about how much less space you need for high speed rail.

In 2022, a Texas supreme court decision gave the backers of this high speed rail project the power of imminent domain.

But right after the court's decision, the leadership team at Texas Central made mysteriously resigned.

The groups backing the project did not respond to multiple requests from CNBC for a comment.

I think they put all those conversations with people calling them on hold until they can get to a point where they have a path forward for that communication.

The decision gave the backers of Texas Central a legal right to purchase land along its planned route if property owners are adequately compensated.

Finding out that the high speed rail could potentially go our property has made it very difficult for me to sleep.

The eminent domain decision has been made by the supreme court of Texas, but

it's too early for me really to comment on whether or not we would have to go down that route.

It's certainly not something that we would want to do.

I hope that over time, we can convince all Texans of the massive benefits that this project would bring.

I think it is easier for the people on the end of the lines to be more supportive.

It is a harder thing to ask people along the corridor to support it because they're seeing the impact of the particular facility on new right of way.

The right of way isn't just a problem in the countryside.

In Houston, for example, the proposed path will end about six miles west of the city center.

Connecting to the downtown light rail with this current plan will require a 20 minute bus ride.

You know, you've got cities that are already really built up, and

so finding a space for that is one issue.

But I think just, you know, making sure that it interconnects into the local transit system as well will be very important.

In Dallas, the elevated tracks will lead directly to the DART light rail system, but

the Texas Central alignment ends there and does not connect to downtown Fort Worth and its population of over 950,000 people.

So we think terminating the high speed rail in Dallas is a mistake.

A coalition of planners in north Texas are looking to build their own connection from Fort Worth to Dallas.

We don't know the new holding company of the Texas Central partners, so we have no idea what their vision will be.

But some members of the group have asked for changes that could trigger a potentially costly environmental review.

The National Environmental Policy act, or NEPA, was created in 1970 and can be used to slow down projects.

The problem we encountered in Texas is that ironically, even though high speed rail is fundamentally so good for the environment.

It was often environmental regulations that held up our progress.

Challenges like these can cause delays which can send a project's costs up.

As of February 2024, the Texas Central project was estimated to cost over $33 billion to deliver.

Another high speed rail project connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco is also facing delays.

The project was approved by California voters in 2008.

After $1.3 billion in environmental reviews, costs have skyrocketed.

Completing the entire 500 mile system could now cost between $88 billion and $128 billion.

The federal government announced plans to partner with the backers of Texas Central late in 2023, giving the project new momentum.

The US used to be a world leader in railroad.

In the 1950s, the decision was taken to build the interstate system.

The highways that we use today and also aviation really took off with the jet age and just progressively over time, rail became less of a focus for the US So we want to change that.

Amtrak is wholly owned by the United States government.

It delivered over 28 million customer trips in 2023.

Since COVID we've actually got a back to more than our pre Covid levels.

People are flocking to the railways again.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Can Amtrak Finally Bring High-Speed Rail To Texas?

ultimately

obvious

massive

opportunity