Texas On "Fast Track" To High Speed Rail

[M II A II R II K]

Texas High Speed Rail Faces a New Threat: Semantics

https://www.citylab.com/transportati...t-route/587743

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- Some of the opposition to the project focuses on an oddly existential question: whether the company is a railroad at all. “Simply self-declaring that you are a railroad does not make it so,” Kyle Workman, the president of the opposition group Texans Against High-Speed Rail, told the Houston Chronicle in February. — The terminology is important for reasons beyond its own sake. Being a railroad or not determines whether Texas Central is entitled to use eminent domain as it surveys and acquires property. State law allows railroads and certain other private companies to use eminent domain to seize land for projects in the public interest.

- In February, in response to a lawsuit by a landowning couple in rural Leon County, a district court ruled that Texas Central did not have that right. The firm is “not a railroad or interurban electric company,” the judge stated, because it hasn’t laid track or run a train yet. — And there may be still more hoops to jump if some legislators get their way. Earlier this month, Texas Senator Brian Birdwell added language to the state’s proposed 2020 budget that would curtail Texas Central’s ability to communicate with state government officials as it proceeds.

- It is one of just many bills filed in this year’s legislative session, mostly by rural Republican lawmakers, aimed at dragging down or outright terminating the high-speed rail project by creating additional regulatory requirements. Texas Central has dodged other such attempts in the past, but this year, there are more than ever, according to Workman. As the Texas Tribune reported this week, an entire congressional subcommittee has been appointed to referee the battle over the multibillion-dollar proposal.

- What motivates combatants? A few factors seem likely, including a Texas-tight attachment to property rights (some 95 percent of land is privately held), and fear that the privately funded project could run aground and force state taxpayers to save it. It’s also hard to ignore the possible influence of bias against passenger rail promulgated by various right-leaning think tanks and other conservative critics. Texas bullet train detractors frequently point to California’s high-speed rail project as a ghoulish postcard from the future.

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