@rantanamo This some of the plans you been hinting at?
You could put it in that category. This is actually pretty far along, but it has a lot of political opposition in the rural areas in between. Texas Central Railroad is basically a corporation formed to take care of the political and logistical side of getting this put together. The Japanese Central Railroad company is the company putting up the financing and engineering. They've run this high speed rail profitably and with no accidents ever like over a 50 year period. 15 years of no accidents with the Kinkisharo model they want to run in Texas. So they have the funding and engineering side. Army corps has approved their plan and corridor. The problem is, they want to do this without state funding or emminent domain. So no matter which alternative they choose they are getting a lot of rural opposition. TCR and JCR have been willing to work with them. They wanted to initially build berms with pass-throughs, but they are being required to build more viaduct type raised tracks where its asked of them. They want to start construction this year or next, but good luck with that. Especially with the emboldened politicals. Shame as this is the only route in the US that has been deemed economical by them with no federal money. California has gone ahead and started building a line, but with lots of state money. This could start and open sooner because of an easier route to build and being privately backed. Supposed to be quicker door to door than a flight and Dallas has developers throwing their money and land at stations if they build it(two sites chosen will either be over I-30, yes over or just south next to where the Alamo Drafthouse sits, aka the original new Cowboys Stadium site back in '04). Houston's station would be in NW Houston @610 and 290 according to the approved routes. They weren't able to secure a route to downtown like Dallas was. I don't know what to think. Can't blame people that don't want this going through their ranch land, but at the same time, I have some land in East Texas and would love for this to run through it as long as I'm compensated.