Dallas to Houston HSR

It's been discussed forever, but momentum has picked up.

Background

High Speed Rail has been much discussed in the United States without much traction. Growing up in Dallas, I’ve heard a lot about the proposed Texas Central project which would connect Dallas and Houston via HSR, but so far no progress has been made. Recently, there has been renewed interest in reviving these efforts. The Biden administration has made historic investments in passenger rail so it is not surprising to see momentum build up for this route.

Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Houston comprise the 4th and 5th largest metro areas in the United States with a combined population over 15 million people. The 2 regions are connected by I-45 which is routinely packed with drivers getting from Dallas to Houston or vice versa. This trip takes about 5 hours via driving and can be longer with traffic and stops. Building a train between these two regions is a no brainer, and below I will go into potential routing options and some of the challenges.

Texas Central, the company leading this project, is backed by JR Central, which is the Japanese HSR company famous for utilizing Shinkansen technology. This is an ideal situation as the US does not know how to build HSR and just giving all control to a Japanese company should yield positive results.

Route

The route will follow a relatively straight line from Dallas to Houston with a stop in Brazos Valley. There are talks about a shuttle service to College Station (home of Texas A&M University) from the station in Brazos Valley. The goal is to reduce travel times to about 90 minutes between DFW and Houston. This is about the same time as flying and significantly faster than the 3.5 hour drive. The routing seems extremely efficient for a fast journey between these core cities. The stop in the Brazos Valley is great for capturing students going to and from Texas A&M and given that lack of major cities between Dallas and Houston, there is no other need for a stop.

Challenges

Dallas City Council

The Dallas city council recently announced they are commissioning an economic impact study for the proposed elevated rail line through downtown Dallas. This elevated line would form the track from Fort Worth to Dallas via Arlington. This elevated line will allegedly impact local developments. It’s funny that this is a concern, yet the various elevated highways seem to be of no issue. Apparently the elevated 23 lane interchange below is acceptable yet building elevated rail will cause issues. Of course those familiar with Texas will not be surprised at this at all.

If the end goal is tunneling that would be a disaster. Tunneling is notoriously expensive and thus elevated rail is preferred.

Land Acquisition

A lot of rural landowners are resisting selling their land along the route. In 2022, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Texas Central can use eminent domain to obtain the land needed to built the railway. Even then, only 30% of the land has been acquired and I would not be surprised to see elected officials in Texas oppose Texas Central’s efforts to obtain the remaining land. Like with a lot of intercity rail projects, land acquisition will probably prove to be the toughest.

Last Mile

This is the real question. Public transport within the Houston and DFW area is atrocious. The DART light rail does provide connectivity to various suburbs from Dallas. Furthermore, the vast majority of people live within a 45 minute drive from either downtowns and thus can drop and pick up passengers. Driving to the station in downtown Dallas taking the train to Houston and driving from the station in Houston to a suburb about 3 hours which is much shorter than the at least 5 hour trip from suburb to suburb. This is significantly faster than driving and is a lot more useful and effective especially if a single person is traveling.

Another solution is to build more infill stations around Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston. A station in Arlington, home to over 400K people and halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, would be convenient for people to not have to drive to downtown Dallas or Fort Worth. Furthermore an infill station can be built in Montgomery County, a county of 600K people north of Houston. These stations would add a few minutes to the journey, but due the sprawling nature of Texas, would be beneficial to increase ridership.

Demand

Per the research I could find, over a million people fly between Dallas and Houston per year. That’s not to include the countless number that drive between the two cities. The DFW metro area recently surpassed 8 million people while Houston has about 7.3 million. As a result, there is a significant pool of potential riders especially if the time between both cities is about 1.5 hours.

Brightline, which recently announced service between Miami and Orlando has seen about 220K passengers per month on about 15 trains each way per day. The combined population of the Orlando and Miami metro areas is about 8.7 million which is significantly less than the combined DFW and Houston metro areas. As a result, we can expect that demand and ridership will be much higher. Brightline train times are comparable to driving whereas the HSR will be much faster.

Finally, there is the notion of induced demand. Right now, driving between the two regions takes around 5 hours. For most people, that is quite a journey making people less likely to take trips to visit friends and family. A 90 minute train is a game changer. All of a sudden, someone in Dallas is more likely to make more trips to visit their friend in Houston simply because of the ease of transportation. It cannot be overlooked how many trips will occur simply because it is now much easier to get between these metro areas.

Conclusion

High Speed Rail between DFW and Houston would be a game changer. It would reduce travel times between 2 of the largest metro areas in the world, reduce emissions, and lower car accidents. Yes, there will be a high cost to built it, and many learning curves to overcome, but the reward will be worth it.