The decade-plus battle to bring high-speed rail to Texas could soon be over. On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy delivered a blow to the project, known as Texas Central Railway, by rescinding a $63.9 million federal grant. Duffy called the project "a waste of taxpayer funds."
The Texas Central Railway was unveiled in 2013 as a fully privately funded high-speed rail project connecting Dallas and Houston. Originally estimated to cost $10 billion, the project would be able to shuttle passengers between the state's two largest cities in 90 minutes (versus nearly four hours in a car).
Like other high-speed rail projects before it, Texas Central has run into project delays and cost overruns. By 2019, the project's investors updated their original cost estimates to $20 billion. In 2020, project estimates were updated again to $30 billion. A 2023 analysis by Baruch Feigenbaum, senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes Reason), estimates that the project's operating and construction costs will be at least $41.6 billion.
