The United States is in a
race against time to upgrade its
transportation system. People 50 years ago didn't
think about, well, maybe we should have had high
speed rail in the United States long before now. Other parts of the world
have certainly initiated high speed rail at 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 205mph. 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 multi-billion dollar mega
project with no taxpayer money, until Amtrak
announced a plan to revive the project late in 2023. Everything is set to go. This is what we call
shovel ready. We just need to reinvest
in the effort. They are now in the
process to getting the finance. If they started
construction, the total construction period would
be 7 or 8 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. Is Texas ready for bullet
trains? 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 we got the legislation passed. We got the
franchise awarded to the French. We competed with
the Germans. Ben Barnes was an early
investor in a project to build a system in Texas
that would mimic France's TGV system. The effort ultimately
failed 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 used
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. Too short to fly, too
long to drive. 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 that 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. This is our family farm,
Morney-Berry Farm. 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. Jody Berry says her family
has farmed this land for generations. In the 20
10s, she became a member of Texans Against High
Speed Rail, a grassroots collective who has
opposed Texas Central. This thing is 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 8 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 eminent domain. But right after the
court's decision, the leadership team at Texas
Central 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 through
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 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. Going 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 rail 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 back to more than our pre-COVID
levels. People are flocking to
the railways again. But the big thing missing
is a true high-speed rail that would be ultimately
transformative for this country over the right
distance and with the right city pairings. Funding for Amtrak is a
perennial sticking point in Washington. The agency struggles to
profit on any lines outside of the Northeast
Corridor and relies on subsidies to stay afloat. At the same time, the
government subsidizes the interstate highway system
at a much faster pace than it ever has for passenger
rail projects. You know, people sometimes
elected officials have no problem providing massive
subsidies for highways. Interstates. For whatever
reason, railways seem to be treated differently. It's not unique to this
country. The Texas State Department
of Transportation is planning to spend $9
billion to widen parts of Interstate 45 within
Houston, and over $6 billion for widening the
Interstate 35 corridor between Austin and San
Antonio. Any form of transportation
is subsidized, and I've got faith in the younger
generation that that's coming along today. And,
you know, it's it's it's their children that's
going to suffer the consequences of an
inadequate transportation system. Everywhere else in the
world. We're trying to get people out of planes, out
of cars and onto high speed trains because
there's so much more efficient. Congressman Seth Moulton
is seeking more funding for bullet trains with
the American High Speed Rail Act of 2024. A previous version of
this bill failed to pass in 2021. Still, the government is
planning to spend $66 billion on upgrades for
passenger rail systems with a focus on high
speed rail. That includes a route
connecting Vancouver, Canada, to Seattle and
Portland. Another route would
connect Atlanta to Charlotte. These
proposals, along with Texas Central, would
receive $500,000 in the Corridor Identification
program. Those rewards are
relatively small compared to California's $3.1
billion grant to advance the San Francisco to Los
Angeles high speed rail connection. Another grant
would go toward a connection from Las Vegas
to the Southern California valley. That Brightline, privately
funded high speed rail line between Las Vegas
and California, is going to be paralleling an
interstate highway that's subsidized by the
American taxpayer. There's a compelling
argument to provide meaningful, enduring
subsidies to keep railways going because that has a
massively net positive beneficial effect on the
economy. The bullet train in Texas
will be based on the design of Japan's
Shinkansen system. The Shinkansen runs on
long welded rails, and the track has very minimal
curves, which allows for higher speeds. It connects 22 major
cities in Japan. Approximately 64 billion
people have taken trips on the Shinkansen since its
opening in 1964. The United States is a
kind of green field for high speed railway. Masaru Sano is a corporate
officer at Central Japan Railways, otherwise known
as JR central. Mr. Yosano was also a
lead consultant for the project in Texas. His team has marketed
bullet trains to cities around the world. Taiwan High Speed Railway
started their operation from 2007 by using of
Japanese Shinkansen technology, and we at
JRC [have been] providing technical assistance to
Taiwan High Speed Railway since 2014. Separately, the Japan Bank
for International Cooperation gave the
Texas Central project a $300 million loan in
2018. This investment aligned
with the Japanese government's export
strategy. They asked domestic businesses to
develop $226 billion in new exports to be earned
by 2025. The Shinkansen system,
much like high speed rail projects in the United
States, face substantial cost overruns when it was
being planned. Unlike US projects, the
Central Shinkansen line was built quickly,
opening just five years after the start of its
environmental review. The economic and
environmental benefits in Japan have been obvious. Trains can carry more
passengers while using less energy and producing
fewer carbon emissions when compared to
airplanes or cars. If Shinkansen were to be
constructed in Texas, it would be expected to make
a significant contribution in terms of the reducing
of CO2 emissions and energy consumption. The trip from Tokyo to
Osaka is 376 miles long, and would take 7 to 8
hours to drive its 3.5 hours by train. And there's nothing like
it in the United States. And just from
environmental alone, but from a cost per passenger
mile, you're going to be able to travel on the
high speed train at much lower cost than you are
driving your automobile. So it's going to change
the standard of living and the comforts and life. And I'm talking about the
blue collar person. I'm talking about the the
college student. Amtrak says the Texas
Central route could open by the early 2030s if it
passes a financial review. If we don't grasp the
opportunity now, we're almost saying we're never
going to grasp that opportunity, and that
would be a massive omission for the US.
