Robert Stackhouse

Yesterday at a monthly event hosted by Mayor Ben White of the City of College Station called “Coffee with the Mayor”, the mayors of two cities talked about one potential future of high speed rail in Texas. The two mayors were College Station’s own Mayor Ben White and Temple’s Mayor Bill Jones. The plan they talked about is called the Texas T-Bone. The T-Bone would run north to south along the I-35 corridor and east to west from the Port of Houston to Killeen.

Mayor White started the conversation by stating that in the past there had been several bumps in the road along the way to high speed rail becoming a reality in Texas, but that those bumps were being smoothed out due to the attention of some folks in Washington D.C. Mayor White then introduced Mayor Jones from Temple who spoke for the majority of the rest of the hour.

Mayor Jones started out by stating that he had gotten involved in the effort to bring high speed rail to Texas due to the involvement of former College Station Councilman John Happ. He then went on to say that since the population of Temple is similar in size to College Station and since Temple is located along the I-35 corridor, the people of Temple understand the need for transportation.

Mayor Jones then went on to talk about the large impact that the interstate highway project beginning with President Eisenhower in the 1950s had on this country. He then said, “I think high speed rail can have the same impact on the state of Texas as the Interstate Highway System has had on America.” Mayor Jones also said, “Elected officials all over the State of Texas are spending time, unpaid time, working on high speed rail for the benefit of the State of Texas. High speed rail will shrink this state, and make it more accessible to all the citizens of Texas.”

Mayor White mentioned that the interest in high speed rail started about 20 years ago in the State of Texas.

The first high speed rail effort in the State of Texas was the Texas TGV. This project began when the Texas High Speed Rail Authority awarded a franchise to last for 50 years to a consortium of American, Canadian and French companies (Morrison Knudsen, Bombardier, and GEC-Alsthom respectively). TGV literally is french for “high speed train”.

Mayor White said, “I’ve gotten to ride that high speed rail over there [Spain and Germany], and its a really great system.”

The Texas TGV project was cancelled in August of 1994 amidst financing problems. The Texas TGV, also called the “Texas Triangle” was supposed to cover about a 760 mi route connecting the three major metropolitan areas in the State of Texas (DFW, Houston, and San Antonio). According to Mayor White, in late 1999 and early 2000 the high speed rail effort in the State of Texas was ressurected by Harris County Judge John Eckels and others. So the Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation was formed. It was to be a grass-roots effort to bring high speed rail to the State of Texas. Mayor White went on to say, “[Kay Bailey Hutchinson] is a champion for passenger rail, Amtrak, in the State of Texas. It’s not efficient here. It is profitable in the north east corridor. It can go 130-140 mi/h there. Some consider that to be high speed rail, but purists know otherwise. It doesn’t have the equipment, the safety that we need.”

It was then mentioned that the T-Bone plan is planned to be a 440 mile route as compared to the 760 miles that was to be covered by the Texas Triangle. A 320 mile difference. Also, the T-Bone plan would pass through areas in Central Texas that would not have been serviced by the Texas Triangle, Bryan/College Station among them.

Mayor Jones continued by saying, “I will give President Obama credit for this. He said he wants high speed rail. He wants high speed rail european style, 200 mi/h. Texas is different, we all know that. This is a place we can build a model for high speed rail in the United States. The population in Texas is pushing 24/25 million people. They are saying 1,000 people a day moving to Texas. So the state demographer, stated that the modeled projection for the population of the State of Texas in 2040 is about 50 million people. In the time that the population is in that range, 78%, 38 to 39 million people, will live in the T-Bone mega region. It is the state and congressional leaders’ job to make sure that we have safe and effective transportation for that time. We don’t want to put more vehicles on the road that pollute. Especially in large cities where air quality is already a problem. Both passenger rail and freight rail are needed in this state.”

Mayor Jones then went on to talk about the political process already in action to support high speed rail in the State of Texas.  He then said  that, “Congressman Edwards has expressed support for the high speed rail plan that we outlined as the Texas T-Bone.” Elected officials are working towards the formation of a local government corporation called the South Central High Speed Rail Authority. He then said, “We should receive good support for our request from the Texas Caucus, as we have a good Congressional caucus that has been built over the last several years of representatives in Texas.”

Mayor Jones mentioned that funds coming from the stimulus package would have to be commited within three years.

Mayor White then interjected, “Speak to the military component of the configuration.”

“The T-Bone we were able to push because of the connection to Fort Hood,” said Mayor Jones.

Mayor White then encouraged Mayor Jones to speak about the physical footprint of the rail system.

Mayor Jones then stated that necessary strip of land forthe track would be about 80-100 feet wide. He said, ” It’s gotta be a dual track. We’ve ridden a lot of rail that’s elevated. We can do the same thing right here in Texas. We can elevate that thing and life can go on as normal.” He was speaking specifically about cattle ranching and the ability of the cattle to graze around the pylons holding up the track.

Mayor Jones also said, “The Port of Houston is a supporter. Through the Port of Houston some comments have been made that some of the cruise lines would like to have this as a feeder system. We see it connecting the major airports of the cities of Texas.”

Mayor Jones then mentioned the projected cost, “The main thing we’ve got to do to justify this expense, 12-20 billion dollars.”

Mayor Jones suggested that the track costs could be between $30-50 million dollars per mile. Those estimates were based on figures from some of the existing projects in Europe. The technology used to implement the rail system along with other factors will influence those numbers going in to the future.

In talking about the construction of the track itself, Mayor Jones mentioned that at this stage the T-Bone supporters were technology neutral. Meaning they have a preference to neither mag-lev nor steel rails.

In response to a question about the status of I-35 construction, Mayor Jones then said, “Temple will be the last component [of I-35] built to 6 lanes, and that is projected to start 2013. Six lanes is the maximum capacity.”

Talking about financing, Mayor Jones said, “We’re not looking to do this on the back of the taxpayers. We want this to be an operationally profitable system.”

Mayor Jones then talked about tax increment financing through the creation of a tax increment financing development zone. Mayor Jones talked about one possible scenario where 50% of the profits from the system might go to the company to maintain the infrastructure and the other 50% might go to the localities to support the infrastructure there.

Mayor Jones gave a short history of the demise of the Texas Triangle, “Southwest airlines and the landowners killed the last high speed rail effort in the state of Texas.”

Mayor Jones also mentioned that during nighttime hours, some European high speed systems were repurposed to handle small parcel delivery.

Towards the end of the discussion I asked, “What are you doing to involve young people? Especially young people in rural areas?” They basically stated that they were weak in that area and were looking into it.

I also wondered what the projected maintenance cost would be of such a system per year.

Since they didn’t get to far into technology and since I like to call myself an environmentally minded guy, I wondered, what are they planning on using to generate power for this system?

Since Mayor Jones indicated that the military had no plans of using the system for troop transport, I wondered what good could this do for the military community in Fort Hood? Later on a started thinking that such a system might make PCS moves easier for soldiers and their families. I also thought that this might be particularly helpful to the single soldier who doesn’t have a car while changing duty stations.

I also wondered, since this is about moving people not cargo, how does this help the folks in the rural areas between Fort Hood and the Port of Houston?

Since most of us don’t want to pay to park our cars in extended stay lots, I wondered how are people going to get to the train station?

I also wondered what this might do to increase or decrease the effects of urban sprawl, sprawl that you can see in the form of half filled office complexes and strip malls in Bryan and College Station.

A friend and neighbor of mine I talked to after the event expressed some concerns about what such a rail system would do to property values in the area.

All good questions I think. Ones I’m looking forward to seeing answered.

High speed rail in Texas sounds like a great idea to me. I think we just have to keep our eye on the ball to insure that it holds a profitable future for all of us.