Texas legislation to support high-speed rail has apparently stopped in its tracks.
House Transportation Chairman Tom Craddick, a Midland Republican, said high-speed rail is a tough sell in the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature, particularly among lawmakers in East and Southeast Texas who have become increasingly combative after years of acrimony over the long-proposed Dallas to Houston line.
“I think they’re a long way from passing it,” Craddick said of high-speed rail, citing potential encroachment of private property as the “biggest” objection among lawmakers and their constituents. “A big deal is, people don’t want it running through their property,” he told the Fort Worth Report.
“It doesn’t look like it’s moving anywhere anytime soon,” added Lewisville Republican Mitch Little, a transportation committee member who has been critical of companies leading the efforts.
The only high-speed rail project requiring direct legislative approval this session was proposed under a bill by Rep. John Bucy III, an Austin Democrat, that would create a state-funded high-speed line between San Antonio, Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth.
But the two other high-speed initiatives, including Texas Central’s Dallas to Houston line, are facing adversarial bills that are effectively designed to stall or block their progress. The North Central Texas Council of Governments, through its Regional Transportation Council, is advancing a high-speed line between Fort Worth and Dallas and ultimately connecting to the Dallas-Houston extension.
“We’re not seeking any legislation (regarding high-speed rail),” explained Michael Morris, director of transportation for the Arlington-based North Central Texas Council of Governments, the metropolitan planning organization for the Fort Worth-Dallas area. “We’re just trying to make sure legislation isn’t passed that would make it hard for Texas to be a leader in high-speed rail.”
Andy Jent, a top executive with the now-Fort Worth-based Texas Central calls one measure, House Bill 2003 by Palestine Republican Cody Harris, “a misguided attempt to stop the project.” He told lawmakers it would reveal proprietary information to competitors and undercut efforts to put together financing. Senators are set to hear the bill, sponsored in the Senate by Brenham Republican Lois Kolkhorst, during a Wednesday transportation committee hearing.
With the 2025 Legislature entering its final weeks before its June 2 adjournment, Bucy acknowledged that his vision for a high-speed line to free motorists from nightmarish congestion on Interstate 35 faces a bleak outlook given the current mood in the Legislature.
“I think it’s still a hard lift this session,” he said.
Bucy’s bill authorizes the Texas Department of Transportation to use state funds with a private entity to create passenger rail linking three of the state’s biggest metropolitan areas. A companion Senate measure authored by Democratic Sen. Sarah Eckhardt of Austin had not received a committee hearing as of May 12, seemingly dooming the initiative.
“They’re still not dipping their toe in the water to be able to move any type of passenger rail project forward,” Peter LeCody, president of Dallas-based Texas Rail Advocates, which promotes passenger and freight rail development, said in describing legislative resistance. “It’s just the way that things are in Austin right now.”
Bucy’s bill sought to overcome a ban on the use of state funds for high-speed rail that the Legislature imposed in 2017. Rail opponents have pushed to create further roadblocks throughout the current session.
Harris pushed three bills targeting high-speed rail projects, including the House-passed HB 2003 requiring disclosure of financial details that Harris said would impose greater transparency over rail management. Other Harris measures prohibit high-speed rail companies from using eminent domain authority to acquire property and ban the use of public funds to alter a roadway for the construction of high-speed rail.
“There’s very few people who are supportive of the project,” Harris said in describing the attitude among his largely rural constituents. “It’s very much a project that tramples on the flyover counties for the benefit of the big cities.”
Rail advocates push back on criticism
The roadway bill, House Bill 1402, drew opposition from planners with the North Central Texas Council of Governments and the Regional Transportation Council as a threat to potential plans to use right-of-way on the east-west Interstate 30 corridor for the high-speed line between Fort Worth and Dallas.
“I’m sure hoping that doesn’t happen,” Morris said of Harris’ bill in reference to the council’s plans to incorporate “public sector land on Interstate 30” in its high-speed project.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, a Democrat who chairs the Regional Transportation Council, also expressed concern about House Bill 1402 in a letter to Rep. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Transportation Funding.
“In order to minimize costs to the public, engineering for the DFW high-speed rail project is being coordinated between planned high-speed rail and Interstate improvements,” Jenkins wrote. “House Bill 1402 is contradictory to that cost saving.”
Texas Central and other rail supporters also worried that Harris’s HB 2003, which passed the House overwhelmingly, would chill high-speed rail development through its required disclosure of sensitive proprietary information.
“What company in the world, if you’re trying to organize and get your financing together, is going to want to have all your underwear and your laundry out on the clothesline for everybody to see?” said LeCody, the Texas Rail Advocates president.
Jent, appearing before the House Transportation Committee on March 3, said the bill “will sow further confusion and could significantly harm the existing investors who’ve invested substantial time and money to develop the project.”
Harris, like several other conservative colleagues on the House Transportation Committee, pulls few punches in his assessment of the North Texas-Houston rail project, which is seeking to overcome a history of management and escalating cost projections over the past 15 years.
“They’ve jerked everybody around for over a decade,” Harris told the Fort Worth Report, saying the cost has risen from about $10 billion to more than $30 billion. “Now we can’t even get them to project the cost.”
Committee members questioned Jent for details on Texas Central’s financing and management when he represented the company at a hearing on April 17. John Kleinheinz, whose Fort Worth-based company Kleinheinz Capital Partners Inc. is the lead investor in Texas Central, was in the audience, Jent said, but the CEO did not address the panel.
Kleinheinz and Texas Central both declined interview requests from the Fort Worth Report.
Fort Worth company takes the lead
Texas Central’s appearance came in response to a subpoena the committee issued for information on the company’s finances.
Kleinheinz Capital Partners stepped in to take the lead on the Dallas-Houston project after the Trump administration canceled $64 million in federal funds for the project on April 14. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in announcing the cut, described taxpayer-funded construction as “unrealistic and a risky venture.”
In April, the Fort Worth City Council agreed to work with Arlington to conduct an economic impact study of high-speed rail in Tarrant County.
Texas has long been considered as a big stage for high-speed rail because of its stature as the second-largest state, sprawling population growth and nation-leading economic expansion.
“We think the state is a leader in transportation technology,” says Morris, “and high-speed rail would be a great technology for Texas to showcase to the rest of the world.”
Canales, the subcommittee chair on transportation funding, says he agrees with the rationale for expanded rail in Texas but adds that the project’s troubled background has imperiled efforts to bolster support among lawmakers and their voters.
“We need a lot more passenger trains,” he says. “Texas is huge. I think we could save a lot of lives. I think we could save a lot of energy. I think we could save a lot of pavement. It’s just not a popular subject for the reasons aforementioned.”
“The lack of follow-through, the lack of not being able to complete it, and then hamstringing property owners has really been a black eye to the concept of high-speed rail,” Canales said.
Democrats who advocate for high-speed rail lamented the Legislature’s latest thumbs-down on the topic.
“Another year, another session gone by, and the only thing that’s happening is the costs are going up year by year on any transportation projects, especially given the cost of steel and concrete,” said Rep. Ramon Romero Jr., D-Fort Worth. “The longer we wait to make a project like that go, the further out it is, and it’s unfortunate.”
Rep. Chris Turner, a Democrat whose district includes Arlington and Grand Prairie, echoed the assessment.
“I support high-speed rail. I think it makes a lot of sense for a state,” he said. “But I think overall the Legislature is pretty hostile to rail. I haven’t seen anything encouraging this session with respect to rail.”
Senior business reporter Eric E. Garcia contributed reporting.
The Fort Worth Report’s Texas legislative coverage is supported by Kelly Hart. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
Dave Montgomery is an Austin-based freelance reporter for the Fort Worth Report.
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