Private firm plans high-speed Texas rail
by AMAN BATHEJA
IRVING – The leaders of Texas Central High-Speed Railway sound very confident for a company expecting to succeed where scores of state planners, elected officials and private interests have failed.
The firm hopes to have bullet trains moving Texans at 205 miles per hour between Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston by 2020.
The bit that has raised eyebrows: The company plans to do it without seeking public financing.
“We are not the traditional state-run railroad,” Robert Eckels, the company’s president and a former Harris County judge, said at a high-speed rail forum in Irving on Tuesday. “This is designed to be a profitable high-speed rail system that will serve the people of these two great cities and in between and, ultimately, the whole state of Texas.”
Backing the Texas-based company is a group led by Central Japan Railway Company, which handles more than 100 million passengers each year on its bullet trains in Japan.
“They’re spending real money on high-speed rail to try and get things done,” said Gary Fickes, chairman of the Texas High-Speed Rail and Train Corporation, a nonprofit coalition of public and private leaders that for years has been advocating for a high-speed rail system in Texas. “I think they’re the real deal.”
While the project is generating enthusiasm, Eckels acknowledged he’s also heard from plenty of skeptics who predict he will eventually ask for billions of dollars in public support. But Eckels said his investors would likely walk away from a project that couldn’t stand on its own.
“If we start taking the federal money, it takes twice as long, costs twice as much,” Eckels said. “My guess is we’d end up pulling the plug on it.”
Previous efforts to bring high-speed rail to Texas have crumbled amid quarrels about public financing and opposition from airlines and other groups. While even a privately funded project would have to work with federal, state and local agencies, the company’s shunning of public money is drawing strong initial interest.
The relatively flat, sparsely populated land between North Texas and Houston makes the project more doable than similar plans that have been proposed in the Northeast or California, Eckels said. One approach that could reduce costs considerably is using existing rights of way for freight rail to build the new track. For the system to work, the high-speed trains would have to go over, under or around car and pedestrian traffic and couldn’t cross other tracks, Eckels said.
“This train doesn’t perform well if you have to stop it many times,” Eckels said. “It works great if you stop it midway, maybe up at College Station, maybe a couple of other places.”
The company is advertising the project as a way to move passengers from North Texas to Houston in 90 minutes. Eckels said the trip could be significantly shorter once the trains are up and running.
After the DFW-Houston line is operational, a second phase would likely link Austin and San Antonio to the system with a route parallel to the I-35 corridor, Eckels said.
Fickes, who is also a Tarrant County Commissioner, said more people are talking optimistically about high-speed rail coming to Texas now than just two years ago. The Texas Central Railway seems more promising, Fickes said, than a previous Obama administration offer of $8 billion to jumpstart high-speed rail projects around the country.
“I predict Texas will be the first state that has high-speed rail because it’s private-sector driven,” Fickes said.
At a day-long forum on the future of high-speed passenger rail in America, other attendees agreed that Texas was likely to be first out of the gate with a true high-speed rail system, often defined as one with trains that travel 185 miles per hour or faster.
During a presentation on the array of financial and regulatory hurdles blocking the success of high-speed rail in the country, Richard Arena with the Association for Public Transportation said Texas is a possible bright spot.
“You guys are not waiting for things to happen,” Arena said. “You’re making it happen.”
Arena said the state’s strong economy and growing population make high-speed rail a more likely proposition than in other regions. But he was highly skeptical that the rail project could come together without public funding.
“My numbers say it’s going to be a stretch,” Arena said. “There was a reason why all the passenger railroads went bankrupt 50 years ago. I just don’t know.”
AMAN BATHEJA reports for The Texas Tribune where this story was originally published. It is reprinted here through a news partnership between the Tribune and the San Marcos Mercury.
COVER: TEXAS TRIBUNE ILLUSTRATION by TODD WISEMAN
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on 08/15/2012. Filed under Business, Texas, Top Business.
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4 Responses to Private firm plans high-speed Texas rail
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The passenger railways went bankrupt due to the advent of passenger jet aircraft starting in 1959, in addition to the development of motorways (express-ways) like the Interstate system (which eventually swallowed most of them up) starting right at that time – especially when the car was seen as a symbol of status and independence. Furthermore, passengers were being neglected in favour of freight even then after so much of that traffic was lost after the railway strike of 1954 (if I recall correctly) – and in any case, trains weren’t moving anywhere near as fast then as these bullet-trains can do nowadays.
As part of the success of this – or any HSR/TGV/TAV (treno alta-velocità – Italian for “high-speed train”) – ALL level crossings with any roads or other railways MUST be COMPLETELY eliminated and catenary carefully installed for optimum speed, with trains’ height standardised and track-curves made as wide as possible, with radii of not less than 5 km. (3 miles). Furthermore, any slope increases/decreases have to be kept at no more than 1% (1 in 100).
No less important for an HSR to work is that lines must be double-tracked and built completely for HSR standards on BOTH tracks. Any freight traffic has to be made subservient to passenger trains, with those freight trains that get to use it being limited in length so they can go at speeds of 160 km./hr (100 MPH) and so be compatible with passenger traffic. The twin tracks ought to be connected to each other at decent intervals using the highest-possible precision switches with LONG interchange-lengths so as not to slow anything down at all.
Done right, the USA could catch up to Europe or Japan as quickly as anybody (China included) and even surpass them!! After all, roads will NEVER be able to go faster than 110 km./h. (70 MPH), while the skies are absolutely past the point of saturation with air traffic such that more airports are NOT the answer (especially given how much time is spent in checking-in/out plus security – on top of getting to and from an airport). This is where rail comes into play as a medium to fill the gap between road and air transportation – and where aeroplanes can then be concentrated on what they do best, long-distances of not less than 800 km. (500 miles).
Catching up to Europe on anything is a non-starter in today’s political climate,I’m afraid. In case you haven’t heard, half of Americans despise and distrust Europe. Too secular, too socialist, too European for corn-fed American tastes.
And that’s too bad. High-speed rail would be an excellent addition to our people moving options.
I once looked into passenger train from Austin to Fort-Worth for commuting on weekends. It took at least an hour more to get there by train than by car and that did not include getting to/from the depot. Passenger trains in TX don’t work. HSR on the other hand is a viable alternative to driving. Covering long distances in such a short period of time really opens up a whole lot of opportunity that I think will help attract even more businesses with good jobs to Texas.