The Texas Central Railroad, which began work in 2014 on its proposed high-speed rail link between Houston and Dallas, won a big victory on June 24 at the Texas Supreme Court, which ruled that the private enterprise enjoys the eminent domain power the state grants to railroads under the Texas Transportation Code. That means Texas Central, which back in 2020 received environmental and safety clearance for its project from the Federal Railroad Administration, can force reluctant landowners – of whom there are a few in rural East Texas – to sell their property for the project, which the railroad says will carry its first paying passengers in 2026.
Depending on what kind of civics geek you are, you may know that historically, this is how America’s railroads, and later its pipelines, got built. However, there’s now only one privately owned intercity passenger railroad in the U.S. – South Florida’s Brightline – which opened in 2018 on existing tracks. Amtrak’s Acela service, the nation’s only true high-speed rail, was also built in an existing corridor, so Texas Central’s greenfield project is the first thing like it for about 150 years. Even Texas’ fizzled attempt 30 years ago (1989-95) to create a state high-speed rail authority presumed its right-of-way would be publicly owned, even if it granted a franchise to a private operator. The Obama administration’s high-speed rail initiative likewise led to a study of potential service along the I-35 corridor from Oklahoma City to Monterrey – but not from Houston to Dallas. Thus, an opening was left for Texas Central, which plans to use the same Japanese Shinkansen trains that connect Tokyo and Osaka and make the 240-mile journey in 90 minutes, with one intermediate stop to serve Bryan/College Station.
The extreme novelty of Texas Central seemed like it would work in favor of those big land and ag interests along the route who’ve tried to derail the project at the Texas Legislature and stall it out in the courts. Hilariously, Texas Central identifies itself when necessary as an “interurban electric railway company,” a phrase in state statute referring to pre-World War II public transit, such as between Dallas and Denton or Houston and Galveston. (Most of these systems were gone by 1940.) Yet Texas Central is to be electric, and it will go between two cities, and so SCOTX – in affirming the earlier ruling of the 13th Court of Appeals – held that it unambiguously has the eminent domain powers granted to interurbans in Texas law more than a century ago.
This is despite the fact that, as the plaintiffs argued when they originally won this case in 2018, Texas Central has no tracks, trains, or stations, and is not guaranteed to ever have them: In their brief to SCOTX, the plaintiffs argue that the law should “protect Texas landowners from ill-equipped entities … who seek to seize land for speculative projects only to inevitably abandon it …” However, in her opinion for the court, Justice Debra Lehrmann writes that the Legislature could limit eminent domain in such situations, “but it simply has not done so.”
This article appears in July 8 • 2022.