California might have some competition in the race for high-speed rail.
Texas Central Railway wants to begin construction on a high-speed line from Dallas to Houston as early as 2017. The current plan is to go from downtown to downtown, with possibly one stop along the way in College Station. An environmental impact assessment is under way and the hope is to be operational by 2021.
Vancouver’s driverless Sky Train
The company claims that the price per ticket will be competitive with airfare and that the run will take a mere 90 minutes. To give that some context, current travel time from Houston to Dallas by car is about 3.5 hours according to Google (but closer to 4.5 according to my prior experience).
While there’s a lot to be skeptical about here, the impact of connecting the nation’s 4th and 6th largest urban economies could be significant. If a high-speed line does get built and if it does manage to deliver on its specs (two major “ifs” already), it would be the equivalent of a magic portal…or a stargate…or a warp pipe…or a tesseract…or…well…the point being it would make the two places functionally much closer together, and that’s a big deal.
Cities become economically vibrant through agglomeration. Bringing people closer together lowers search costs for both employers and employees. It also increases the likelihood of “creative collisions”. What high-speed rail could do is combine the benefits of agglomeration that each of these two cities already enjoy.
And, as early in the day as it is, there’s already speculation that a line connecting Dallas and Houston would be a precursor to additional lines connecting all four of the state’s pillars of civilization: Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin. The unbridled optimist in me imagines high-speed rail as the embryonic bones of a future mega-city encompassing the entire Texas Triangle.
…but…I’m still skeptical.
Texas Central Railway is backed by private investors. It claims it can pull off the project without resorting to either government subsidies or land development. This means total reliance on fares to cover operational costs as well as recoup capital investment. To my knowledge, no mass transit system in the U.S. covers operational costs on fares, let alone operational and capital costs combined.
That said, it’s a cool project and I’d love to see my home state get a little more diverse in terms of transportation infrastructure, especially if it’s being paid for out of private pockets. And hopefully, if there’s a bait and switch, it’ll turn into a land play rather than politicking for subsidies. Combining transit and land development works pretty well in Hong Kong, so I wouldn’t mind seeing the same approach tried back home.
High speed rail has a high output per hour, so it can be profitable in itself. All the JR companies with HSR run at a profit. Those without operate off the revenues from a temporary investment fund until they can be profitable.
JR Kyushu was running off the fund until they built their shinkansen. Since then they’ve operated at a profit, returned the investment fund to the government and been listed on the stock exchange.
Hokkaido is expecting the same results when the Hokkaido Shinkansen opens.
Only JR Shikoku, with no shinkansen, and no place for one, is expecting to continue being supported.
High Speed Rail has a history of making good profits, in itself. I expect Texas will do well.