Travis County is funding a study to determine the feasibility of a passenger rail between Austin and San Antonio.<\/p>\n
The commissioners court voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a nearly $125,000 contract with HNTB to conduct the study. The engineering firm will look into all possible routes along SH 130 and I-10.<\/p>\n
Travis County Judge Andy Brown said the county\u2019s goal is to find a route on publicly-owned land, a move he said could make building a rail line between the two cities possible before construction on I-35 is complete.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that makes the possibility of getting rail between \u2026 the Williamson-Travis area down to Bexar County much more realistic and potentially much quicker,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Texas Department of Transportation estimates construction on I-35 through downtown Austin, which kicked off last year, will take up to eight years. <\/p>\n
Travis County Commissioners said the rail would offset traffic on I-35, which they project will worsen with construction and population growth. The current population along I-35 between Austin and San Antonio is roughly 4.5 million people and is expected to grow to up to 7 million by 2030, according to Travis County documents.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time we talk about \u2026 providing passenger rail between Austin and San Antonio, people are just ecstatic about the prospect,” Travis County Commissioner Brigid Shea said. \u201cBecause nobody likes being stuck on I-35, and it\u2019s going to get worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Travis County is the sole funder of the study, but if building a rail line is deemed feasible, the federal government would have to fund construction costs.<\/p>\n
Travis County leaders have pushed for a passenger rail system to San Antonio for years, but so far haven\u2019t been able to secure funding for the project.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Austin was left out of the Federal Railroad Administration\u2019s multi-billion-dollar investment in major railway projects around the country. Brown has also previously asked Union Pacific, which owns the tracks along I-35, for help building the rail but to no avail.<\/p>\n
TxDOT also has a contract with HNTB to study the feasibility of a rail between the two cities along I-35. The results of both studies are expected to come out next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Travis County is funding a study to determine the feasibility of a passenger rail between Austin and San…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[13474,13478,13479,698,4775,13475,5368,13476,82,84,83,13477,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-17188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-amtrak","9":"tag-amtrak-austin","10":"tag-austin-to-san-antonio","11":"tag-bexar-county","12":"tag-i-35","13":"tag-i-35-traffic","14":"tag-light-rail","15":"tag-passenger-rail","16":"tag-san-antonio","17":"tag-san-antonio-headlines","18":"tag-san-antonio-news","19":"tag-train-to-san-antonio","20":"tag-travis-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}