A boost for high-speed rail

Planning for high-speed rail service linking Fort Worth to Houston continues to move forward, slowly but decidedly.

The Regional Transportation Council last week allocated $4.5 million from its regional tollway revenue accounts to help support that planning over the next three years.

In the big picture of this project, that’s not a huge amount of money — Texas Central Partners has proposed spending $10 billion or so of private money to build the Houston-Dallas portion of the line by 2021.

The Fort Worth-Arlington-Dallas portion is being studied for possible public funding. Fort Worth businessman Bill Meadows is the chairman of a special commission created by state transportation authorities to lead that part of the study.

He says the money from the RTC will enable his commission to develop information needed by several entities that have expressed interest in the project. That includes the parent company of the French TVG high-speed rail system.

Steady progress on high-speed rail is good for North Texas.

This story was originally published August 25, 2015 at 5:57 PM with the headline "A boost for high-speed rail."