For years, I’ve been hopeful that Texas would get high-speed rail. The highways between Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio are congested and always under construction. It’s crazy to compare the availability of public trains between cities in other countries to the lackluster train system in the United States.
Back in 2020, the Federal Railroad Administration granted final approval for the Dallas-Houston bullet train, and construction was supposed to begin. Just 90 minutes from Dallas to Houston, what a dream! I wrote about it here.
Then in 2024, the project received a $64 million federal grant to keep the project moving along. I was very optimistic!
Unfortunately, yesterday the federal government rescinded that grant. The project is back to being privately funded. I am beginning to doubt that I will see this train route in my lifetime.
For now, I’ll have to settle for convenient train transportation when I travel internationally. I wish more Americans could experience the convenience and speed of those systems and lobby for them here at home.
Author: Nancy
Nancy lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband and three kids. Her favorite vacations include the beach, cruising and everything Disney.
It’s just about impossible to address this situation without at least dipping a toe into politics. Without trying to go too far down that road, one party sees large infrastructure projects like high speed rail and Amtrak as vital for normal people. Accordingly they try to allocate money for such projects. The other side doesn’t much care and tries to kill funding for such projects.
Public transportation, including high speed rail networks, should absolutely never be for-profit projects, whether local buses, trams, light rail, or high speed rail. The purposes of these are to be more eco-friendly, reduce traffic congestion, avoid having to perpetually increase highway lanes, and provide a (often money losing) safe, secure, accessible form of transportation to our populace. That’s what they do in Europe where they have systems that work.
@Christian Great summary!
Never! Why? Because there is no WILL, no PRIORITY to have a high speed rail network in the US. Look at China, they went from nothing in 1998 to 28,000+ miles now of high speed rail network. Look at France, it is rolling out the 5th generation of high speed train.
@Alex I agree, other countries have impressive systems for sure. The USA is definitely more of a car culture.
So, after traveling by high speed rail from Dallas to Houston, how would one get to your destination within Houston, or surrounding area? By (subsidized) public transportation, like in Europe?
@Fred Both Houston and Dallas have limited local trains/busses. But you’re right, getting to some places once there would be challenging without Uber.
I hope not, the project was not going about acquiring the land properly, and it was impacting too many native texans without the proper compensation.
Yup. And unfortunately there is third world components in first world America.