Summary: High-speed rail could be a reality in coming years, but success requires the completion of separate high-speed rail projects designed to connect, forming a system of travel from Arlington or Fort Worth to Houston with no need to change trains.
Latest Update: 15 May, 2023
North Texas high-speed rail planners continue their efforts to bring high-speed rail to the DFW area.
"High-speed rail could be a reality in coming years, but success requires the completion of separate high-speed rail projects designed to connect, forming a system of travel from Arlington or Fort Worth to Houston with no need to change trains."
• North Texas high-speed rail planners look at private company as route forward, roll out ideas, Fort Worth Report, 15 May 2024, Excerpts
Transportation planners in North Texas continue their efforts to bring high-speed rail to the area, a system that would link Dallas and Fort Worth via Arlington and push south to Houston.
The North Central Texas Council of Governments held a public meeting Monday at which its planners detailed the status of high-speed rail in the region as well as the status of efforts to control air quality problems that have affected DFW for decades.
High-speed rail could be a reality in coming years, but success requires the completion of separate high-speed rail projects designed to connect, forming a system of travel from Arlington or Fort Worth to Houston with no need to change trains.
Last year, Texas Central Partners [a private company] and Amtrak announced a plan to jointly study forward motion on a long-planned high-speed rail line to Houston.
The Council of Governments said it is moving ahead with plans to bring high-speed rail service to the Interstate Highway 30 corridor, connecting Fort Worth and Arlington to Dallas and a planned high-speed rail line south to Houston emanating from Dallas.
Wheeler said that high-speed rail projects under review include more than just the route to Houston.
“You have a planned study that TxDOT initiated several years ago, and then COG and several other metropolitan planning authorities along the route in Austin, San Antonio and Waco all the way down to Laredo advanced even further,” he said. That route could utilize other high performance lines such as magnetic levitation, or maglev, trains and high-speed rail.
“Our study would look to connect all of these projects into a single system where they’re not simply corridor based, not just going from say Dallas to Houston or forward to Austin, but you’re able to create what the Regional Transportation Council calls a ‘one seat ride,’ where you go from Fort Worth to Houston on the same train,” Wheeler said. “You don’t have to get off this and get to a new station or get to a different train. You stay on the same train.”
“These projects take a long time to plan, to build — decades,” Wheeler said.
The Dallas-Fort Worth High-Speed Transportation Connections Study is in the National Environmental Policy Act portion of Phase 2, which focuses on route alignment, locations for possible stations, and potential social and environmental impacts. That phase began in March.
The Council of Governments said it has studied 43 potential alignments and a series of possible high-speed technologies as part of Phase 1 of the DFW High-Speed Transportation Connections Study.
The agency said that high-speed rail along the I-30 corridor became the preferred method to connect potential riders from DFW to the planned Dallas-Houston route.
High-speed rail leaving Dallas toward Fort Worth would be elevated, Wheeler said, while Arlington trains would likely run in a sort of trench between the eastbound and westbound lanes of Interstate 30. The Dallas leg would be elevated in part to match the height of tracks leaving a proposed station on the western edge of downtown near Union Station.
“We’re not looking to disrupt the main lanes, the frontage roads or the traffic along that corridor,” Wheeler said.
The Council of Governments said that Dallas-Fort Worth has a population of more than 8 million people and is expected to top 11 million by 2045. It said this rapid growth creates a need for innovative transportation options to preserve and enhance the region’s quality of life.
Air Quality Planner Daniela Tower said that one important air quality standard, fine particulate matter, changed in February from 12 micrograms per cubic meter to 9 micrograms per cubic meter. Much of the region’s air quality is impacted by vehicular traffic and as the region grows that impact could grow unless measures are taken.
Senior Transportation Planner Cody Derrick also explained the importance of the Transportation Improvement Program document, which is an inventory of funded transportation projects. It’s a federal- and state-mandated document that contains regionally significant projects that are funded with either federal, state or local funding sources.
Derrick said that for the four years that document covers, “We have approximately $8.4 billion of funding across several funding commitments, and this covers our roadway and transit projects.”
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