File photo
File photo
Texas Central Railroad reached another milestone with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) completion of the mandated environmental review and establishment of safety requirements for the high-speed rail.
By approving the Record of Decision that included the 10,000-plus-page Final Environmental Impact Statement, the FRA also approved the alignment that the high-speed rail will follow between Dallas and Houston, Texas Central Railroad said.
“This is the moment we have been working towards,” Texas Central Railroad CEO Carlos Aguilar said. “The release of the final RPA and ROD by the Federal Railroad Administration represents years of work by countless individuals, affirming a very thorough and careful federal regulatory process that will make the Texas Central Railroad the first high-speed rail system to be implemented in the United States.”
Accident-avoidance measures are more stringent that what the FRA requires for conventional U.S. rail operations, the release reported.
Texas Central Railroad plans to replicate the Japanese Tokaido Shinkansen high-speed rail system. Central Japan Railway Co. has transported more than 10 billion passengers in more than 55 years with zero operational passenger fatalities and zero accidents.
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