AUSTIN, Texas — Two Central Texas county judges have announced the formation of a committee to pursue passenger rail service in the region.
The Austin Monitor reports that Travis County Judge Andy Brown and Bexar County judge Peter Sakai this week said they have fored the Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee, a 24-member group seeking the development of passenger rail options along and beyond the Interstate 35 corridor connecting Austin and San Antonio. (Travis County includes Austin; Bexar County includes San Antonio.) The county judge position in Texas has broad administrative duties and is often viewed as a county’s chief executive officer, as explained here.
“I look forward to engaging with industry leaders on how we can best support the expansion of passenger rail service in this corridor and beyond,” Brown said in a statement. “The fastest-growing metros must leverage this moment to build a modern transportation system to serve the economic, environmental, and public safety needs of all central Texans.”
Brown has been a major advocate for Austin-San Antonio rail service, placing it among the top priorities in his 2024 State of the County address.
Committee members include Henry Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Todd Stennis, government affairs director for Amtrak; Dottie Watkins, CEO of Austin transit agency Capital Metro; Jeff Davis, rail division director for the Texas Department of Transportation; and Husein Cumber, chief strategy officer for Florida East Coast Industries and a member of the Surface Transportation Board’s Passenger Rail Advisory Committee. The Monitor article includes the complete list.
They need to get the folks from the previous attempt, LStar, to show them what went wrong. From my understanding, the railroad removed their support and that ended a very forward planning central Texas passenger rail plan.
I’m a huge fan of railroading and see it as a great means of transportation. I attended many of the LStar meetings and was a vocal supporter among my friends for it. I know they will most likely try to get UP to allow them access, they really need to be ready to have to build it from scratch and I think that’s going to take a lot of political capital that I doubt they will be willing to use. This is a project that needs a long term and short term focal points and that’s hard to achieve.
I wish them luck. There are two easily identified routes between Austin and San Antonio I-35 and the Union Pacific track. The owners of both have no interest in commuter rail. Texas DOT is building extensive skyways along I-35 near San Antonio while planning to take down the elevated lanes in Austin to reconnect neighborhoods separated by their construction. (Personally not sure how ten lanes of interstate highway is better than four lanes on the ground and four on raised superstructure). Elsewhere they just keep filling the medians with concrete to form new lanes. Union Pacific has said no before. They have heavy traffic connecting to and from Mexico and several Quarries along the southern edge of the hill country.