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Passengers board the Texas Eagle train serviced by Amtrak. TxDOT has released a study looking at the possibility of running additional passenger trains on the Union Pacific tracks between San Antonio and Austin.<\/p>\n
Christopher Lee \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
A new TxDOT study proposes five routes on which passenger rail could be increased\u00a0between San Antonio and Austin.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of TxDOT<\/p>\n
If improvements are made to existing rail tracks between San Antonio and Austin, passenger trains could make up to eight round trips between the cities each day, transporting thousands of commuters, according to a new study from the Texas Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n
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That would be a significant increase from the current once-daily, inconveniently scheduled and frequently late Amtrak service. Yet there is a big barrier to making it happen: The owner of the tracks, Union Pacific, doesn’t appear to be interested.<\/p>\n
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The Omaha-based freight giant opted not to participate in TxDOT’s study. In 2024, an executive informed Travis County Judge Andy Brown in a letter<\/a> that the company wasn’t looking to host more passenger service and was focusing instead on meeting Texas’s growing need for freight capacity. The tracks, running along Interstate 35 most of the way, serve as a crucial link in the U.S. supply chain.<\/p>\n ALSO READ: San Antonio woman drops civil rights lawsuit against VIA police<\/a><\/p>\n TxDOT’s study lays out a long list of proposed infrastructure improvements which it says would allow for new passenger trains to be run without hampering freight traffic. But with Union Pacific controlling the right-of-way \u2014 in other words, the land the rail runs on \u2014 the railroad’s approval is essential to making any sort of increased passenger service happen.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Union Pacific didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Another stumbling block is the expected cost of making the improvements outlined in the study. Depending on the route the passenger trains would take and how frequently they would run, the price tag\u00a0could be between $810 million and $1.9 billion, according to the study.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Travis County has commissioned<\/a> a separate study to look at whether a new passenger rail line could be built running beside Interstate 10 and Texas 130, the toll road about 12 miles east of I-35, that could then take commuters between downtown San Antonio and\u00a0Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n The county hasn’t yet released that study. A spokesperson for Travis County Judge Andy Brown didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking an update.<\/p>\n Here are some important things to know about TxDOT’s study, and the long unsuccessful effort to boost passenger rail service between San Antonio and Austin:<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Why is more rail service desired?<\/p>\n Anyone who has driven I-35 between San Antonio and Austin can attest to the highway’s congested and often chaotic traffic. Despite\u00a0TxDOT’s ongoing billion-dollar projects<\/a> to expand the highway in both cities, the congestion threatens to get worse.<\/p>\n The highway passes through some of the fastest-growing communities in the U.S., including Kyle, San Marcos and New\u00a0Braunfels. TxDOT’s study\u00a0notes that population and job densities near the Amtrak stations in San Antonio, San Marcos and Austin are set to double by 2050.<\/p>\n On a typical weekday, commuters make about 113,000 trips between Bexar and Travis counties, according to the study. Even more people make shorter commutes in between: 210,000 between Travis and Hays counties and 176,000 between Bexar and Guadalupe counties.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Yet those commuting along the I-35 corridor have few options apart from getting behind the wheel. Amtrak’s service linking San Antonio and Austin \u2014 known as the Texas Eagle, it runs from San Antonio through Dallas as far north as Chicago \u2014 is not an option for most commuters.<\/p>\n The northbound Texas Eagle departs San Antonio at 6:48 a.m., while the southbound train arrives at 10:46 p.m. \u2014 hardly ideal times for someone commuting to work or making a one-day business trip to Austin.<\/p>\n The study notes that the route takes an average of two hours and 26 minutes going north and three hours and 26 minutes going south \u2014 traveling at an average speed of 33.7 miles per hour and 23.9 miles per hour, respectively. It arrives on time only 56% of the time, according to the study.<\/p>\n “The single daily round trip between Austin and San Antonio does not support commuters, day trips or same-day returns,” the study concludes.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The study predicts that a two-hour passenger rail service between San Antonio and Austin could attract 2,337 daily riders.<\/p>\n What does the study propose?<\/p>\n The study considers options for running passenger trains two times, four times and eight times a day between San Antonio and Austin, stopping in San Marcos and New\u00a0Braunfels along the way. The new service would be in addition to Amtrak’s Texas Eagle.<\/p>\n While a train station already exists for San Marcos, one would have to be built in New\u00a0Braunfels, at a site that has yet to be determined.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The study proposes five routes for the new service, including the existing Amtrak route. For the northern half of the distance between Austin and San Antonio, the five routes are identical, but starting in New Braunfels, three of them split onto a different Union Pacific track taking them through San Antonio’s North Side, near San Antonio International Airport.<\/p>\n One of the five routes would end not at San Antonio’s existing Amtrak station, which is near the\u00a0Alamodome, but rather near VIA Metropolitan Transit’s\u00a0Centro Plaza hub on the near West Side, where at least 10 bus routes stop. It would require a new station to be built.<\/p>\n The study notes that the existing route used by Amtrak would pose a difficulty for increased service because the Amtrak trains have to do a “reverse-move” \u2014 in other words, back up \u2014 to get to San Antonio’s station. While this is viable for Amtrak’s once-daily service, performing this maneuver with additional passenger trains would likely affect Union Pacific’s freight operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of the proposed routes would avoid this problem by taking passenger trains onto a different track for the last 3 miles to San Antonio’s station. But it would require the construction of new track.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Trains could run at up to 79 miles per hour on the routes if the tracks were upgraded, according to the study. Currently, the trains run at up to 70 miles per hour.<\/p>\n With the improvements made, it would take just under two hours for passenger trains to run between San Antonio and Austin, the study says. While that’s still longer than it usually takes to drive between the cities, it is an improvement over the Texas Eagle’s time.<\/p>\n What are the difficulties involved?<\/p>\n For the proposed new passenger trains to be run without holding back Union Pacific’s freight service, many improvements would have to be built, including signals, an operations and maintenance facility and side-tracks onto which slower trains could pull over to let faster trains pass by.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n As it now exists, Union Pacific’s route is clotted with “bottlenecks,” including a large number of crossings and single-track sections. Some of the improvements would require the acquisition of adjacent stretches of property.<\/p>\n Freight volumes along the corridor are expected to soar in the coming decades, the study notes \u2014 making it all the more difficult to make room for passenger trains.<\/p>\n Over the next 20 years, non-bulk freight traffic \u2014 all forms of freight except for raw commodities such as grain, stone and chemicals \u2014 is forecast to increase by about 3% per year, equating to an extra 10 trains per day, according to the study.<\/p>\n If the proposed improvements are made, they would “fully mitigate the impact of the additional passenger trains,” the study says.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Along with the cost of building new infrastructure, the new passenger service would carry an annual maintenance cost of about $60 million if eight daily round trips were offered, according to the study.<\/p>\n If history is any guide, establishing new\u00a0passenger service between San Antonio and Austin will be a Herculean feat.\u00a0Leaders in San Antonio and Austin have sought to run more passenger trains on Union Pacific’s line for more than 20 years. One of those leaders, former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, once said it would take “God’s intervention for us to have high-speed rail.”<\/p>\n The most recent attempt, known as the Lone Star Rail District, got as far as deal points<\/a> being signed with Union Pacific. But it floundered in 2016 when the company withdrew its support.<\/p>\n The current effort began in 2024, when Brown partnered<\/a> with Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai on a new push for passenger rail service between the cities.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Caroline Mays, who manages the agency’s rail division as its senior director of planning and modal programs,\u00a0recently gave a presentation<\/a> at a conference of the Rail Passengers Association in downtown San Antonio. She described how Texas’s passenger rail network has withered over the past century and posed the question, “How can we re-rail Texas?”<\/p>\n