High-Speed Rail Could Speed into East Texas
Published Dec 15, 2008
When someone questions the need for faster rail transit to and through Mineola, Longview, Marshall and other East Texas locales, Griff Hubbard has an easy answer.
“It’s not even built yet, and they’ve come,” says Hubbard, executive director of the East Texas Corridor Council.
For the first 11 months of fiscal 2008, three municipalities were responsible for 36,300 passengers on Amtrak’s Texas Eagle route, compared to around 33,200 for Dallas.
Statistics like that were helpful in the council’s receipt of a $455,000 federal grant in January 2008 to study the feasibility of rapid rail for the region, something Hubbard says is possible in the next 15 years.
The board opted to turn that funding over to the Texas Department of Transportation, which will use it to study a passenger component as part of its work on the impact of high-speed rail on freight.
Hubbard expects the final study to show that high-speed rail, service between 90 and 115 miles per hour, would be of great benefit to the area. The rail would run alongside the Interstate 20 corridor, and serve 35 incorporated municipalities and 7.1 million people that make up the council’s coverage area.
“East Texas is way behind the rest of the nation in terms of integrating passenger rail into a balanced transportation mix, but we’re catching up fast,” Hubbard says.
Story by Joe Morris
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