President Joe Biden is reportedly seeking to revive a project that would construct a high-speed railway from Houston to Dallas in Texas utilizing Japanese bullet trains.
According to a Reuters report on Tuesday, citing unnamed administration sources, the White House is looking to make an announcement on the project following talks between Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington, D.C., this week.
The Japanese government and the White House declined to comment on the report, though the project has seen renewed support from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told KXAS in Fort Worth on Sunday: “We believe in this.”
I don’t think most people get how big houston is; its sprawl is nuts. I lived not far from where I-45 meets I-10 for many years. Getting to my rehearsal studio a bit northwest of there frequently took nearly an hour (288 and BW8 IIRC, but I might be misremembering this far on) most times of day. Getting out to see my friends in Katy (still pretty much Houston) could take 1.5 hours. Getting across houston can take a couple of hours, even without traffic on the freeway. It is huge.
I love highspeed rail (I’m on the bullet trains in Japan usually at least 1 round trip every couple months), but I think houston in particular is challenging. I’ve been to the DFW area, but not spent enough time there to comment on that end’s public transit.