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Texas Company Looking to Japanese Partner to Build Dallas-Houston High-Speed Rail, Opposition Mounts
One company in Texas is looking to bring Japanese technology to a potential 240-mile high-speed rail route between Dallas and Houston [nextbigfuture.com]:
Texas Central Partners LLC, a U.S. company aiming to build a high-speed rail link in the southern state, is envisaging Japanese companies potentially providing vehicles and technologies for its planned bullet train service connecting Dallas and Houston.
In a recent phone interview with Kyodo News, Texas Central CEO Tim Keith reiterated that the shinkansen technology of Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Central), Japan's lead bullet train operator, will be employed for linking the two major cities, about 385 kilometers apart.
"Texas Central Partners is one hundred percent committed to the shinkansen system with JR Central as our life-of-system partner," Keith said.
Nearly 50,000 Texans, sometimes called "super-commuters," travel back and forth between Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth more than once a week. Many others make the trip very regularly. The approximately 240-mile high-speed rail line will offer a total travel time of less than 90 minutes, with convenient departures every 30 minutes during peak periods each day, and every hour during off-peak periods – with 6 hours reserved each night for system maintenance and inspection.
Kyodo reprint at The Japan Times [japantimes.co.jp]. A study commissioned by Texas Central Partners estimates a $36 billion economic impact [nbcdfw.com] through 2040 from its $10 billion Dallas-Houston rail project. Proposed measures by the state legislature to prevent the project failed in 2015 [keyetv.com]. Skeptics doubt the company will meet its goal of selling tickets starting in 2021 [texastribune.org], and point to the necessity of using eminent domain to acquire land needed for the project, which the company claims is a "last resort". Kyle Workman [watchdog.org], president of Texans Against High Speed Rail [texansagainsthsr.com], has created a group of Texans opposed to the use of eminent domain and taxpayer funding for the high-speed rail project.
