The Texas Central Railway (TCR) will connect the two cities in what the company calls the two fastest growing city regions in the country.
“Raise your hand if you’ve ever made the drive between Houston and Dallas,” Rebecca Cowle, outreach coordinator for TCR, said. “Keep your hand up if you’ve experienced traffic — an accident, if you’ve gotten a ticket any of the above. … This is going to be for any of you that raised your hand.”
Cowle posed that question at the Sam Houston State University Student Government Association meeting Tuesday night where TCR was the featured guest. David Benzion, communication director, and David Hagy, executive director for community outreach, also joined Cowle at the event. TCR is a for-profit company that began the project four years ago.
Cowle said at its completion, the project will feature eight train sets that depart Houston and Dallas every 30 minutes. Ticket pricing would be competitive to that of airlines.
Benzion said frankly that the reason for that is because they are a private company and need to make money for the project to work. He said the company will spend more than $250 million “before inch one of concrete is laid.”
The project won’t be receiving any federal or state subsidies as of right now, nor have they began negotiations on tax incentives with municipal agencies. The group said it was on the table, but they wouldn’t be reliant upon those in order to operate the project.
“If we can’t operate at a profit, it won’t happen or it’ll go out of business,” Benzion said.
Mayor Mac Woodward asked about right-of-way acquisition. Cowle said TCR wants to minimize use of obtaining private land. Rather, they want to utilize current right-of-ways used by the state. The entire track would be about as wide as a county road, Benzion said.
“People don’t like it,” he said about companies coming in and buying up private land. “We don’t like it. We don’t like it on a corporate level.”
Benzion said the company considers the Trans-Texas Corridor a taboo word because of its problems with right-of-way access. He said that project would have taken almost 500,000 acres of land because of the width — about three football fields wide — compared to a maximum of 3,000 acres TCR may have to obtain.
The Trans-Texas Corridor was canceled officially in 2011 by the Texas Legislature after public outcry over the plans. The TCR wants to use existing rail, interstate, highway and utility right-of-ways to complete the project. The total amount of private right-of-way still hasn’t been determined because the routes have not been set.
Cowle also said the project could begin building starting as early as 2017. It would begin after getting government approval and after completion of an environmental impact study, which could take 18 months.
Benzion said the Texas Department of Transportation and other government agencies have been cooperative in the private group’s efforts because of the national interest and little public funds.
“You know, budgets are tight,” Benzion said. “We’re saying, ‘Hey, if you work with us, we’ll bring millions of dollars into Texas and you get a shiny train.’”
The high-speed train would be the first in the western hemisphere and use technology that has existed in Japan since the 1950s. In that time there have been no accident-related fatalities with the technology.
The trains will seat about 400 passengers, have wireless internet, food and beverage services, mobile phone service, and will travel at a maximum speed of 205 mph. Cowle also said the train is virtually silent due to the design, which was meant to go through dense neighborhoods.
The TCR could eventually connect with a semi-separate effort from Dallas to Arlington to Fort Worth. The latter project is semi-public but would share technology with the private TCR effort.
TCR will host a series of public forums beginning Oct. 21, featuring TCR, TxDOT and a contractor to answer questions and concerns from the public. The forum for Huntsville residents will take place Oct. 28 at the HEARTS Veterans Museum.
From 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. there will be conceptual drawings and engineering plans, that have yet to be created, of the routes and other elements in an open-house style setting. At 5:30 there will be a presentation followed by the comment forum at 6:30.
©2014 The Huntsville Item (Huntsville, Texas)