Significant progress has already been made this year on developing both the Houston-DFW high-speed rail and Grapevine-Fort Worth TEX Rail projects, according to Community Impact News:

The vision:

By 2020, North Texas residents would board a high-speed train in Dallas or at DFW International Airport and arrive in Houston 79 minutes later.

By 2016, commuters or shoppers would wait at a train station in Grapevine to board the TEX Rail to Fort Worth. Or, they could ride to the airport and take a DART train into Dallas.

Plans for the high-speed rail are shaping up enough that ideas have surfaced as to where the Dallas-area station should be. And TEX Rail rolled past a big obstacle this spring when a key agreement was reached with Dallas Area Rapid Transit.

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High-speed rail

The sleek, 200-mph rail comes with a high price tag — roughly $7 billion. The Central Japan Railway, which has two offices in Texas and one in Washington, D.C., under the name Texas Central Railway, plans to foot the entire bill.

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Tarrant County Commissioner Gary Fickes said he has been working to bring high-speed rail to Texas for eight years. He belongs to an advocacy group, Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corp., and also sits on the Regional Transportation Council, which oversees transportation funding, planning and coordination.

The RTC and the NCTCOG comprise the federally designated metropolitan planning organization for the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area.

Plans for the high-speed rail, sometimes known as the bullet train, are gaining traction, Fickes said.

“It’s gotten real serious in the last year,” he said. “In the last 18 months it’s kind of taken on a life of its own, like it’s going to happen.”

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TEX Rail

The rail line planned between DFW Airport and Fort Worth with a station in downtown Grapevine has made “significant progress” since spring, Shelton said.

The Fort Worth Transportation Authority board, which operates the Fort Worth-Dallas Trinity Railway Express, also is handling the TEX Rail project. The board was replaced in March after Mayor Betsy Price expressed dissatisfaction.

The Fort Worth City Council removed all of its appointees to the board and the Tarrant County Commission also removed its single appointee. In an open message to citizens posted on the city of Fort Worth’s website Feb. 7, Price said she asked The T board nearly a year before to speed up negotiations for access, or tracking rights for TEX Rail.

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