French plan cuts Houston out of high-speed rail

Company developed TGV network

Steve Hawley, Oct 01, 09.

SNCF, the French company that developed that country’s TGV high-speed rail network, has submitted an Expression of Interest for developing high-speed rail lines in the United States, according to The Transport Politic, but its initial plans ignore Houston.

The French proposal, which has no associated funding at this time, focuses on four corridors: the Midwest, California, Texas, and Florida. The Texas line would run from Fort Worth to San Antonio, with intermediate stops in Dallas, Waco, Temple, and Austin. The line would also connect to the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and potentially the San Antonio International Airport. SNCF states that the completion of the line would allow consideration of a Houston extension at a later date. The report says, “This alignment does not jeopardize any future project to connect Houston either with the T-Bone solution and a direct branch connecting in the area of Temple-Killeen or with a Delta [triangle-shaped] solution.”

A recent America 2050 report concluded that a high-speed link between Dallas and Houston would be more viable than any other line outside of the Northeast and California.

The Transport Politic reports that SNCF was involved in earlier efforts to bring high-speed rail to Texas in the 1980s and 1990s. Those efforts collapsed under intense pressure from airlines. The current Texas proposal would cost $13.8 billion, and SNCF estimates that the benefits would exceed the costs by 170 percent over 15 years, generating the highest rate of return of any of the corridors. The company projects that annual ridership would begin around 3.2 million riders in 2018, growing to 12.1 million in 2026 and 15.1 million by 2040. The Transport Politic notes that this is much higher than the ridership assumed by economist Ed Glaeser when he concluded that US high-speed rail would not be very viable economically.

The Transport Politic notes, “With the exception of a description of plans by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, SNCF appears to be the only group that submitted a serious, corridor-based response to [the Federal Railroad Administration’s] demand, though infrastructure companies Vinci, Spineq, Cintra, Global Via, and Bouygues all sent in letters promoting rather vague interest in involvement.” The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has identified 10 high-speed rail corridors in addition to the Acela Northeast Corridor, which currently reaches speeds of up to 150 miles per hour but averages closer to 80 miles per hour. The French proposal, which totals over 1,000 pages, envisions trains reaching speeds of up to 220 miles per hour. The FRA proposal would connect Houston to New Orleans and Atlanta, but not to the other cities in the Texas Triangle megaregion.

The SNCF proposal states, “We believe the United States is ideally suited for HSR: it features large metropolitan areas that are relatively far apart, a highly mobile population (2.5 times the European average), and a fast-growing awareness of the importance of the environmental challenges HSR can address.”

Off the Kuff and the Dallas Morning News Transportation Blog also examine the French proposal.

SNCF Texas proposal
America 2050 report: Where high-speed rail works best