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▼ Texas Shinkansen Project Moves Forward with JR Tokai Support
- Category:Driving
DALLAS (Jiji Press) — A private sector-led project to build a high-speed railway between Dallas and Houston is making headway, with technical support from Central Japan Railway Co., better known as JR Tokai, the operator of the Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train line linking Tokyo and Osaka.
Parties concerned are hoping to begin construction work in March 2018 and launch the train service in 2022. The 385-kilometer-long railway would allow people to travel between the two Texas cities in about 90 minutes.
JR Tokai is promoting trains based on the N700 series Shinkansen model and a related train operation system for the Texas project.
In May this year, JR Tokai set up a subsidiary, called High-Speed-Railway Technology Consulting Corp., or HTeC, in Dallas to back up Texas Central Partners LLC, the main entity in the project.
HTeC started business in October, with 17 employees, including engineers, dispatched from Japan, setting the stage for providing TCP with know-how that JR Tokai has acquired from its decades-long Shinkansen operations.
“We’ve at last arrived at the foot of the mountain,” HTeC President Keiichi Kagayama has said in a recent interview with media organizations, including Jiji Press, at the firm’s office in Dallas, likening the project to mountain climbing.
“The mountain is high,” he added, suggesting that there still is a long way to go before the Texas high-speed railway is put into service.
But Kagayama also said, “The higher the mountain, the more ambitious we become to conquer it.”
Currently, about 50,000 people make at least one round-trip between Dallas and Houston a week on business or for other reasons. According to a third-party estimate, about 5 million people will use the planned high-speed railway a year in the mid-2020s, with the number seen reaching 10 million in 2050, and the project will therefore be profitable.
A one-way trip between the two cities takes about four hours by car, and 3½ hours by plane, including the time for moving to and from airports and security checks at airports.
In promoting its Shinkansen technologies abroad, JR Tokai makes it a rule not to take too much risk, in principle, in order to avoid possible adverse impacts on its domestic railway operations.
The company is limiting its involvement in the Texas project to technological assistance and a small amount of investment.
Kagayama said, “We must clear some hurdles” in the Texas project, citing difficulties procuring necessary funds that are estimated to total as much as $12 billion from the private sector.
“We hope to support the project operator on the technological front so that it can explain to potential investors that this is a fantastic railway,” he stressed.
In a separate interview, TCP Chief Executive Officer Timothy Keith said that the company can be “a great example of how a private enterprise can help develop infrastructure” in the United States, commenting on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s initiative of facilitating infrastructure investment using private-sector funds.
TCP plans to cover about one-third of the total construction costs with funds from investors and the rest with borrowings, he said.
“We have conversations ongoing” with investors not only in Texas, but also from around the world who are interested in the project, Keith said, showing his company’s intention to seek necessary financial resources from a wide range of investors, including pension funds.
“Time is our biggest challenge,” he said, in reference to the schedule to launch the construction work in 2018 and the train service in 2022.
Keith suggested that TCP will speed up work to narrow down route options and draw up an environmental assessment report, saying, “That is our next major milestone.”
Parties concerned are hoping to begin construction work in March 2018 and launch the train service in 2022. The 385-kilometer-long railway would allow people to travel between the two Texas cities in about 90 minutes.
JR Tokai is promoting trains based on the N700 series Shinkansen model and a related train operation system for the Texas project.
In May this year, JR Tokai set up a subsidiary, called High-Speed-Railway Technology Consulting Corp., or HTeC, in Dallas to back up Texas Central Partners LLC, the main entity in the project.
HTeC started business in October, with 17 employees, including engineers, dispatched from Japan, setting the stage for providing TCP with know-how that JR Tokai has acquired from its decades-long Shinkansen operations.
“We’ve at last arrived at the foot of the mountain,” HTeC President Keiichi Kagayama has said in a recent interview with media organizations, including Jiji Press, at the firm’s office in Dallas, likening the project to mountain climbing.
“The mountain is high,” he added, suggesting that there still is a long way to go before the Texas high-speed railway is put into service.
But Kagayama also said, “The higher the mountain, the more ambitious we become to conquer it.”
Currently, about 50,000 people make at least one round-trip between Dallas and Houston a week on business or for other reasons. According to a third-party estimate, about 5 million people will use the planned high-speed railway a year in the mid-2020s, with the number seen reaching 10 million in 2050, and the project will therefore be profitable.
A one-way trip between the two cities takes about four hours by car, and 3½ hours by plane, including the time for moving to and from airports and security checks at airports.
In promoting its Shinkansen technologies abroad, JR Tokai makes it a rule not to take too much risk, in principle, in order to avoid possible adverse impacts on its domestic railway operations.
The company is limiting its involvement in the Texas project to technological assistance and a small amount of investment.
Kagayama said, “We must clear some hurdles” in the Texas project, citing difficulties procuring necessary funds that are estimated to total as much as $12 billion from the private sector.
“We hope to support the project operator on the technological front so that it can explain to potential investors that this is a fantastic railway,” he stressed.
In a separate interview, TCP Chief Executive Officer Timothy Keith said that the company can be “a great example of how a private enterprise can help develop infrastructure” in the United States, commenting on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s initiative of facilitating infrastructure investment using private-sector funds.
TCP plans to cover about one-third of the total construction costs with funds from investors and the rest with borrowings, he said.
“We have conversations ongoing” with investors not only in Texas, but also from around the world who are interested in the project, Keith said, showing his company’s intention to seek necessary financial resources from a wide range of investors, including pension funds.
“Time is our biggest challenge,” he said, in reference to the schedule to launch the construction work in 2018 and the train service in 2022.
Keith suggested that TCP will speed up work to narrow down route options and draw up an environmental assessment report, saying, “That is our next major milestone.”
- December 13, 2016
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