From Texas Monthly: New Hopes for a Train From Dallas to Houston

Folks have been debating high speed rail in the state for decades.

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The Texas Eagle, an Amtrak passenger train, made its final run from Dallas to Houston on September 10, 1995. The trip was scheduled to take a little more than six hours, but it dragged on for nine, as signal problems and freight traffic forced delays along the 265-mile route. No one on board, many there to take part in transportation history, seemed to mind: “I’m sorry I never rode it before,” one woman told the Associated Press. But Amtrak was shedding unprofitable lines across the country, and so the service was discontinued.

Now, it seems, the Texas Department of Transportation wants to bring it back. On Friday, the Federal Railroad Administration awarded $2.5 million to fund five studies of up to $500,000 each to explore passenger rail service in Texas, including a TxDOT project to restore a Dallas-Houston route on the same Union Pacific tracks that once carried the Texas Eagle, as well as an Amtrak partnership to resurrect a controversial high-speed rail project that stalled out in 2022.

The money comes from the Federal Railroad Administration’s new Corridor Identification and Development Program, which was enabled by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. The inaugural round, announced Friday, funded 69 studies, an attempt to build a pipeline of intercity rail projects in almost every state. It’s unlikely all of them will get built. “Half a million to study something is a pittance. That’s hardly a down payment,” said David Peter Alan, a writer for Railway Age and longtime transit advocate.

TxDOT applied for three passenger rail studies that would connect the so-called Texas Triangle, encompassing Austin, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. Two of the three corridors were funded, one to restore service between Dallas and Houston and another to expand service between Houston and San Antonio along an existing Amtrak line.

This area contains two thirds of the state’s population and accounts for nearly 90 percent of the state’s growth over the past decade. A TxDOT spokesperson declined an interview with Texas Monthly. In its grant application, the agency acknowledged that Texas highways are among the most congested in the nation and that adding passenger rail would alleviate road congestion, improve safety, and reduce emissions. The state leads the nation in traffic deaths and carbon emissions on its roads.

Although the funding represents a commitment only to study the corridors, the fact that TxDOT applied is significant, said Peter LeCody, the president of Texas Rail Advocates, a nonprofit dedicated to developing rail service across the state. “Passenger rail really has not been in TxDOT’s vocabulary at all,” he said. The agency’s rail division was established in 2009 and received only $21 million in TxDOT’s $37 billion 2024–2025 budget. “We’re pleased to see that TxDOT is making these steps in the right direction.”

But there is no state money designated by the legislature for passenger rail, LeCody said. To secure federal funding for construction, TxDOT would have to commit to paying for 20 percent of any rail project, even as state law requires roughly 97 percent of the agency’s funding be spent on roads. TxDOT cited the Texas Mobility Fund—which has a balance of $460 million—and “state general revenue” as funding sources for the Dallas-Houston and San Antonio–Houston rail projects. “We have asked TxDOT in the past, in their legislative appropriation request, to put in funding for passenger rail projects. They’ve shied away from that,” LeCody said.