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The pipe dream of high-speed rail in Texas has become hazier as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office and Republican state lawmakers plan to throw up roadblocks to the return of train to Austin next month.

Over the past two years, Texas’ high-speed rail ambitions have shown signs of life. Amtrak relaunched and took the lead in a a long-considered high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston. North Texas transportation planners have floated the idea of ​​extending this line to Fort Worth and Arlington. A glut of federal transportation funds under President Joe Biden’s administration and increased congestion on Texas highways have caused some local leaders to advocate for even expanding conventional passenger rail between major urban areas of the ‘State.

It remains to be seen where these efforts will go under a second Trump administration. Rail industry advocates and experts say Trump has given few clues about how he will approach high-speed rail in his second term — after the Biden administration backed financial support federal government to the development of rail transport.

But in the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature, anti-rail efforts will likely continue when lawmakers convene in January.

Some rail advocates still see reason for hope. On the one hand, traffic jams on Texas roads, in a context of strong economic growth in the state, have become endless. Add to that an expected $20 billion budget surplus, and state lawmakers may be willing to explore rail options, said Peter LeCody, who runs the Texas Rail Advocates organization.

“This could be a turning point where the Legislature starts to wake up and smell the fumes from vehicles,” LeCody said.

Some lawmakers are trying to lay the groundwork for a statewide expansion of high-speed rail. A bill filed by state Rep. John Bucy, an Austin Democrat, would direct the Texas Department of Transportation to revive a high-speed rail line between Dallas, Austin and San Antonio along the congested corridor of the Interstate 35. The state agency is expected to enter into a comprehensive development agreement with a private company to build, maintain and operate the line, which is expected to reach speeds of at least 110 miles per hour.

There are no immediate plans for such a train, Bucy said, and it is not clear who would operate it.

Another bill from Bucy would allow the state to devote more money to high-speed rail as well as other modes of transportation like conventional passenger rail, bike lanes and walking trails. The Texas Constitution states that the majority of TxDOT’s budget must be spent on highway construction and expansion. If Bucy’s bill passes, Texas voters will decide whether to amend the constitution to allow more of those dollars to be spent on transportation options other than highways.

“We need to be able to move people,” Bucy said in an interview. “We need to give people other options.”

The future of the much-sought-after Texas Central high-speed rail line between Dallas and Houston still remains in question. The project, first launched in 2009, would transport passengers at top speeds in excess of 200 miles per hour, transforming what is now a 3.5-hour car journey into 90 minutes by train.

The line would use the same technology used on Japan’s famous high-speed rail network, which connects the country’s major employment centers. A 16-car train can accommodate more than 1,300 passengers at a time.

Amtrak restarted the project last year following a exodus of Texas Central leaderswho had had difficulty acquiring the land necessary for the construction of the line. The route between Dallas and Houston meets a number of criteria that make it ideal for high-speed rail, Amtrak officials said, namely that it connects two of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas and that it is flat enough to allow trains to reach the speed necessary to make the journey relatively quick.

High-speed rail proposals have long faced a steep climb in the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature — where GOP lawmakers are hostile to passenger rail and have particularly sought to stop the project Central Texas. Texas Republicans — including Gov. Greg Abbott, who formerly announced the Texas Central proposal — sought to block state taxpayer dollars from funding high-speed rail and block efforts to seize land needed for its construction via eminent domain.

State lawmakers approved a law in 2017 to bar Texas Central from receiving state dollars to build high-speed rail.

“If the Texas Central Line can be built without state or federal money, without taking private property, that’s fine with me,” said state Sen. Robert Nichols, an East Texas Republican who heads the state Senate Transportation Committee. “But the answer is ‘no, they can’t.’ … If this was an investment that would pay big dividends, that’s a completely different matter. This is not an investment that will pay dividends. This is a huge cost pit that constitutes a bottomless pit.

This opposition appears likely to persist into next year. Republican lawmakers have introduced proposals to further strengthen barriers to high-speed rail. A bill filed by state Rep. Cody Harris, a Palestinian Republican, would prohibit state lawmakers from earmarking money to finance anything related to high-speed rail operated by a private entity.

Another bill, introduced by state Rep. Brian Harrison, a Republican from Waxahachie, would overturn a 2022 Texas Supreme Court ruling allowing Texas Central to seize land needed to build the Dallas-Houston line — a decision that alarmed East Texas landowners in the proposed route. path.

“I am committed to protecting the private property rights of my constituents from the forced confiscation of their land for this wasteful and unnecessary project,” Harrison said in a statement.

It’s unclear how these GOP proposals would affect development of the Texas Central line now that Amtrak has taken the lead on the project — or the development of other high-speed rail lines.

It’s hard to imagine how the Texas Central line could be built without state money, advocates and rail experts said. The projected cost of the Dallas-Houston route is more than $30 billion, up from an earlier estimate of $12 billion — money expected to come from federal and private sources.

“This project requires tens of billions of dollars and we don’t seem to be close to it,” said Eric Goldwyn, program director at New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management.

Andy Byford, senior vice president of high-speed rail development at Amtrak, said in November that officials were still determining how exactly to finance the project, which has not won federal approval.

Byford told reporters earlier this year that Texas Central had acquired about 30 percent of the land needed to build the line, but maintained that acquiring the remaining land through eminent domain would be a last resort.

Officials planning to build a high-speed rail line connecting Dallas, Arlington and Fort Worth hope to do so entirely with private funds. Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, said he expects private rail operators like Brightline — which owns a route from Orlando to Miami and is pursuing a high-speed route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas – will take interest if the route gains federal approval.

Such a project would reduce traffic congestion and improve highway safety while promoting economic development in the form of housing, offices and restaurants near each city’s train stations, Morris said.

Separately, Morris said he plans to push state lawmakers to create a new state agency focused solely on high-speed rail efforts.

Another mystery is how Trump will approach passenger rail during his second term.

During his first term, Trump canceled more than 900 million federal dollars to help fund California’s beleaguered high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, funds that Biden would later restore. Vivek Ramaswamy – an entrepreneur whom Trump chose to lead an effort alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk to cut government spending and ease federal regulations – called this week for an end to federal support for the California line, which he called it a “pointless vanity project.”

Trump struck a different tone during his election campaign this year, openly questioning why the United States doesn’t have its own high-speed rail.

“They go incredibly fast, incredibly comfortable, without any problems, and we don’t have anything like that in this country. Not even close,” Trump said during a conversation with Musk hosted on the social networking site. “And it doesn’t make any sense that we don’t do it, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Outside of high-speed rail, state and local officials are looking for ways to ease congestion on Texas’ increasingly busy highways and give Texans another way to get around the state.

Using federal dollars, TxDOT is studying how to bolster passenger rail service on an existing Amtrak route from Houston to San Antonio. State transportation planners are also studying how to restore a conventional Amtrak line between Houston and Dallas, a separate effort from the high-speed project.

Amid robust growth along the Interstate 35 corridor, officials in Travis and Bexar counties have revived efforts to increase the frequency of passenger trains between the Austin and San Antonio areas.

Boosting any type of passenger rail isn’t enough to reduce overall congestion, Goldwyn said, adding that state and local officials should also support efforts to make urban areas more walkable and easier to bike around. or by public transport.

Passenger rail “is a tool we can use to solve this problem, but there are a lot of other things we need to do as well,” he said.

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