You can gauge the insincerity of the project by the mendacity of the title. There is an area of Texas known universally as "Central Texas". The "Texas Central" project goes nowhere near it.
It's a rail line from Houston to Dallas. It's not going to happen, unless the legislature goes full bore socialize-the-losses and subsidizes it.
>> You can gauge the insincerity of the project by the mendacity of the title. There is an area of Texas known universally as "Central Texas". The "Texas Central" project goes nowhere near it.
This is an incredibly bizarre criticism. Perhaps you are bitter that the project will not benefit you immediately? I live in Austin, and I am a bit disappointed about that myself, so I sympathize.
One of the many state/public attempts to bring HSR to Texas was built on a "Texas T" route (or "Texas T-Bone", some branding like that) that would have lines from San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas all meet at Austin, so that if you wanted to go from Houston to Dallas, or Houston to San Antonio, it would go through Austin. Unfortunately as I recall (memory fuzzy, very open to correction) this was most recently attempted in the era of Republican Governors saying "F U" to any Obama administration money, even if it would help their state...
It is understandably harder for a private group to start off with a three-line rail network than a one-line rail network, than it would be for a group working with the federal government. Hence when Texas Central Railways that took up the banner, they settled on Houston to Dallas as the most profitable pairing of cities. This is evidenced partly by, at least in the past, that city pairing being the most profitable airline route operated by Southwest.
I followed some of the original proposals for routes, and some of them went through College Station directly, versus the chosen route, which goes through Grimes County stop with a rapid bus to College Station. I would have loved to see those happen, but it turns out they would have had many multiples more eminent domain issues. The current route minimizes private land issues by hugging an existing utility corridor as much as it can, while also balancing land that is easy to build on, and having lower environmental impact.
It may seem a bizarre take to you, however after decades of reading titles of legislative bills and "projects" it's a simple test whose results stand up over time. I use it all the time.
You can never say never, the Texas Leg. is notoriously susceptible to political influence by monied or powerful individual. But I doubt it.
It will also take support of several powerful people within the leg (the speaker, and Lt. Governor), as well as the Governor to get the eminent domain condemnations done without interference.
But land developers get local governments (most often), and sometimes the Texas government to use public funds to build roads to increase the value of land to be "developed" all the time. It's the main way that new roads get built around here. Then they use a "private utility district" (authorized by the friendly leg.) with taxing authority to fund the installation of streets and sewer, etc. and voila, now they can make billions selling houses. All without risking a dime. It's a nice gig using tax dollars to funnel money to millionaires, if you've got the right friends.
It's a rail line from Houston to Dallas. It's not going to happen, unless the legislature goes full bore socialize-the-losses and subsidizes it.