Despite remaining impediments and ongoing public meetings about its still mostly theoretical existence, developers of the long-discussed Dallas-to-Houston high-speed bullet train are rolling along. Monday morning, Texas Central publicized new renderings and details of the train’s Dallas passenger station, which would occupy about 60 acres in the Cedars, just south of the convention center downtown.
Behold, maps.
That land is mostly vacant, and conveniently located near DART rail stops at the convention center and in the Cedars. These designs do, of course, cut out space for parking lots. Proponents of the bullet train envision the station as a spur for further development in the already up-and-coming neighborhood. Federal regulators, in an environmental impact statement studying all of the 240-mile Houston-to-Dallas route, compared the potential uptick in development around the station to the transformation of Uptown. This goes along with all the other touted benefits of constructing the infrastructure for a 90-minute trip between Dallas and Houston.
The feds also recently settled on their preferred alignment for the bullet train’s route, if you’d like to envision the rail beyond Dallas. Construction costs of the project have been ballparked around $15 billion, expected to be financed by private investment and potentially federal loans.
