AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Supreme Court has declined to hear a court case regarding Texas Central’s planned high speed rail line between Dallas and Houston, letting stand a lower-court decision recognizing the company as a railroad. The decision is significant because that status could give Texas Central eminent domain powers to acquire land.
Impact Community Newspapers reports the court on Friday denied review of a case filed in 2016 by landowners Jim and Barbara Miles. They won a decision in a 2019 court case ruling Texas Central was not a railroad because it had no trains and had not constructed any tracks, but that decision was reversed on appeal last year [see “Digest: Texas Central is a railroad …,” Trains News Wire, May 8, 2020].
“The Court’s denial of review should put an end to over five years of contentious litigation and clear the path for Texas Central to bring the high-speed train to Texas,” Texas Central CEO Carlos Aguilar said in a statement.
Opponent group Texans Against High Speed Rail, however, said in a statement on its Facebook page that “a motion for rehearing will be filed soon,” and that it would continue to oppose the project in federal courts, and through state and federal legislators.
The contention that the railroad isn’t a railroad because they haven’t laid track or run trains is ludicrous. It makes sense that for a high speed city to city operation, they would need to have all the land in place before they begin construction or they couldn’t run trains anyway if there were gaps.
Now, let me comment on your new website access requirements. I have been a Trains subscriber for dozens of years and Classic Trains since it began publication. Being retired and on a basically fixed income, I have to object to paying extra for web access. That being the case, I will continue to read the magazines, but I will have to forgo access to the website.
The late former President George HW Bush, who lived in my zip code, was looking forward to riding the Texas Central’s bullet train. Sadly, the delays through legal litigation made that impossible. This would have been a great means for him and maybe even his wife Barbara to visit their son in Dallas, former President George W Bush.
What are these NIMBYs afraid of, really?
The Trans-Continental railroads would not exist if they began building today.