Could a Bullet Train From Dallas to Houston Improve Texas' Environment?
Someday you could hop a bullet train in downtown Dallas and arrive in Houston in fewer than 90 minutes. The trip would save North Texans time. But beyond the four hours of drive time or a trip to the airport, it also could be the cleanest and safest way to travel between the two cities, according to Texas Central, the company behind the Texas High-Speed Train. And the project could be just a year away from breaking ground. North Texans have been talking about a bullet train between Dallas and Houston for years. And while it’s getting closer to reality, some opposition and a few federal hurdles stand in the way of the corridor’s construction.
“We’ve had our heads down working on this for a long time,” said Holly Reed, Texas Central’s managing director of external affairs. “The conversation has shifted from, ‘Is this really going to happen?’ to ‘When can I ride it?’” The high-speed train will have a number of impacts on the state, from economy to education, and Texas Central says it wants to ensure it has only positive effects on Texas’ environment.
Good for the environment?
Minimizing the permanent impacts of a train that will cross more than 200 miles of land is no easy task, but Texas could be the perfect place for it. “We’re in that rare air where it’s good for Texas, it’s good for business, and it’s good for the environment,” Reed said. The distance between Dallas and Houston is what Reed called a “sweet spot that is too far to drive and too short to fly,” and the area between the cities is also mostly flat, with no significant bodies of water in the way. “Now that you have these two dots on the map, how do you connect them?” Reed said, voicing the question that Texas Central has been working to solve.
The Texas High-Speed Train will mostly run above ground, and 52% of its tracks will be laid next to existing infrastructure. Four corridors with several route options were studied before Texas Central selected one that it determined would have the least impact on wetlands and existing business, and cross the fewest parcels of land.
But Texas Central says it wants to do more than minimize any negative impacts: It wants to improve Texas’ environment. “This will be the way to go back and forth that is the cleanest alternative,” Reed said.
Currently, about 16 million trips are made annually between Dallas and Houston, and about 90% are made by vehicle, said Rebecca Cowle, a director of external affairs for Texas Central. That number, she said, is expected to increase more than 200% by 2035. A study by the International Union of Railways on high-speed rail systems in France and China found that the carbon footprint of the rail system can be “up to 14 times less carbon intensive than car travel and up to 15 times less than aviation travel.” Once the train is operating, it could help remove over 14,000 vehicles per day on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston, and that decrease could save 81.5 million gallons of gas and help reduce emissions, Cowle said. “Being able to improve air quality by removing cars off the road will further improve the environment impact,” she said. “From an air-quality perspective, it’s a very powerful tool...”
