Texas High-Speed Rail Gets $64 Million Grant

Plans for a high-speed rail line connecting two of Texas’ largest cities have made a step forward after reportedly receiving a $63.9 million federal grant for the project in August.

The proposed 240-mile route between Dallas and Houston could facilitate trains traveling at 205 miles per hour, offering a travel time of less than 90 minutes between the two locales.

According to Amtrak and Texas Central, the company behind the high-speed rail proposal, the project is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 100,000 tons a year, removing 12,500 cars per year from Texas’ I-45. Still, it has faced pushback from local landowners.

The Texan project’s grant award comes as major rail projects in the U.S. continue to trundle along.

“If we are going to add more high-speed rail to this country, the Dallas to Houston Corridor is a compelling proposition and offers great potential,” said Andy Byford, Amtrak’s senior vice president of high-speed rail development programs, in a 2023 news release announcing that Texas Central and Amtrak were exploring opportunities for the high-speed service.

Newsweek has contacted Amtrak for comment via email.

In California, a planned $8.26 billion rail expansion in San Francisco is set to move ahead after an infrastructure consulting firm was chosen in August to provide program management and construction management services.

The Downtown Rail Extension project, also known as the Portal, is expected to extend the Caltrain service from its terminal at Fourth and King streets to the Salesforce Transit Center and accommodate the California High-Speed Rail service in the future.

Upon completion, the extension is projected to serve 90,000 passengers daily, connecting with 11 Bay Area transit systems.

An extension for Chicago’s Red Line, first promised more than 50 years ago, also received good news last month after a construction contract was awarded by the Chicago Transit Authority.

According to the CTA, the $5.3 billion project is the largest in the body’s history. Plans for the 5.6-mile extension includes four new stations.

The extension was first conceptualized in 1969 under Mayor Richard J. Daley, but the plans never came to fruition because of repeated funding delays and the prioritization of other projects, CBS reported.

In June, designs were released for four new stations on the long-awaited California High-Speed Rail line—for the Merced, Bakersfield, Fresno and Kings Tulare stations.

Newsweek has also mapped which countries have high-speed rail projects operational or in the works.

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