Wikimedia Commons / Tim_kd5urs
The Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee is now vying to attach San Antonio, Austin and Nuevo Leon through high-speed rail.
The thought of connecting Austin, San Antonio and the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon through rail is chugging ahead — once more.
On Monday, the Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee — the group vying for a high-speed rail line between the Alamo Metropolis and the state capital — held its month-to-month assembly. This time, the gathering occurred on Amtrak’s Texas Eagle, which runs once-a-day service between the 2 cities.
The group, which incorporates Bexar County Choose Peter Sakai, Travis County Choose Andy Brown and San Antonio District 6 Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda, departed San Antonio’s Amtrak station shortly earlier than 7 a.m. They arrived in Austin round 9 a.m.
Judges Sakai and Brown launched the 24-member Texas Passenger Rail Committee in March in hopes of revitalizing the decades-old thought of connecting San Antonio and Austin through a practice line.
“I loved touring to Austin by practice,” Sakai mentioned at a press convention after the practice experience to Austin. “It’s an effective way to keep away from the visitors that sometimes makes driving on I-35 such a problem.”
Along with San Antonio- and Austin-area officers, the assembly included Emmanuel Lavatory, Nuevo Leon’s deputy secretary of financial improvement, and Javier Diaz Gonzalez, the mayor-elect of the Northern Mexican metropolis of Saltillo.
“We have to give you inventive options for passengers who’re in search of options to utilizing their automobiles to navigate the congested 80-mile stretch,” Sakai mentioned. “I’m additionally keen on investigating choices for rail south to Laredo and into Mexico to alleviate stress on I-35. I need to give our residents one other method to entry these areas whereas permitting regional and worldwide guests a rail choice for reaching Bexar County.”
The prolonged invitation to Mexican authorities officers is a brand new twist within the saga of bringing high-speed rail to South and Central Texas. Nonetheless, it’s not notably stunning.
Nuevo Leon Gov. Samuel Garcia final 12 months despatched a letter urging Texas Division of Transportation Government Director Marc. D Williams to attach Monterey and San Antonio through high-speed rail. He urged the state to make use of funds from President Joe Biden’s Construct Again Higher plan.
“Expanded service will present advantages for each the Texas and Nuevo Leon economies by providing a protected and environment friendly route from the seventh most-populous metropolis within the U.S., to the hub for superior trade in Mexico,” Garcia wrote within the July 2023 letter.
Certainly, the Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee plans to deliver up the concept of producing a rail connecting between Austin, San Antonio and Monterrey throughout the subsequent session of the Texas Legislature, in accordance with News4SA.
Nonetheless, obstacles stay.
Union Pacific owns the first rail line between San Antonio and Austin and is probably going unwilling to develop passenger service on present observe until a brand new freight bypass is constructed, as beforehand reported by the Present.
What’s extra, it is unclear whether or not the notoriously fiscally conservative Texas Lege has any urge for food for funding a high-speed rail mission.
However, the Mexican authorities seems to be going all in with high-speed rail. In July, former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador mentioned his successor, President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, plans to construct three passenger rail strains from Mexico Metropolis to the U.S.-Mexico border.
That proposed mission comes after Mexico spent $8.5 billion on a high-speed rail community within the Yucatan peninsula. Nonetheless, high-volume ridership has but to materialize.
The Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee meets on the third Monday of each month.
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