April 4, 2022 – TRA Newswire – FRA, TxDOT, Texas Railroad Association, Amtrak, Alstom, Texas House Transportation. A record number of attendees at the 18th Annual Southwestern Rail Conference heard from a wide range of presenters on freight and passenger rail issues last Thursday and Friday in Dallas. Videos and on-screen presentations are now being processed by our Texas Rail Advocates tech team and will be loaded onto our website in the near term. If you subscribed to our emails, you will receive a notice when presentations are posted. Of special interest will be the presentation from Federa ..read more

March 29, 2022 – TRA Newswire – 300 attendees will get a front-row seat to hear freight and passenger rail experts discuss important issues of the day Thursday and Friday at the 18th Annual Southwestern Rail Conference in Dallas. As of this past week the conference reached capacity and had to turn away last-minute requests to attend. Presenters at the rail conference will include Allison Ishahara Fultz, Chief Counsel for the Federal Railroad Administration, Texas Department of Transportation Rail Division Director Jeff Davis, DART Executive Vice President Dee Leggett and Ray Lang, Vice-Preside ..read more

March 21, 2022 – TRA Newswire – The Victoria County Navigation District continues to expand and has announced plans for the Texas Logistics Center at the Port of Victoria (TXLC).  Phase 1 will see the addition of over 42,000 feet of track, including the build-out of three 10,000-foot drop and pull tracks. Later phases include storage tracks, transloading, connections to new tenants, and upon completion, TXLC will be served by Union Pacific and BNSF railroads. “The Texas Logistics Center will significantly strengthen the Port’s ability to provide top-tier logistics solutions in economic de ..read more

March 10, 2022 – TRA Austin – Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan today issued interim committee charges for the 87th Legislature and that included studying the state’s future transportation needs, including what Texas might be eligible for under the recently passed Infrastructure Law. The charges, which House committees will begin studying in the coming months, reflect a variety of issues facing the state and build upon the work accomplished during the most recent legislative sessions. The charges will help guide the House heading into the 88th Legislature, set to begin in 2023, as committees gai ..read more

February 20, 2022 – TRA Newswire – The next chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (Houston METRO) is noted Indian-American engineer Sanjay Ramabhadran. He becomes the first from the community to lead a major public transportation agency in Texas. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner made the announcement on Thursday. The 51-year old Rambhadran is a registered engineer and a graduate of BITS-Pilani and Texas A&M University. He served on the METRO Board since 2015 and currently serves as the Chair of the Capital & Strategic Planning Committee and is a member of t ..read more

February 19, 2022 – TRA Newswire – A 1.2 million square-foot flat roll steel mill that opened in Sinton, Texas will be served by both Union Pacific Railroad and BNSF Railway. The Steel Dynamics facility, 30 miles northwest of the Port of Corpus Christi, will employ up to 500 people and is expected to generate $1.9 billion or more in capital investment. The mill uses an electric arc furnace that can generate 3 million tons of production capacity a year. The plant includes a galvanizing and a paint line with additional lines said to be in operation by mid-2023. In a post, the company wrote, “Tha ..read more

January 23, 2022 – Russell Jackson, Contributor – The Texas Eagle is buried in the secondary of the hierarchy of the endangered species of passenger transportation, Amtrak’s long distance trains. For decades the Eagle has run daily between Chicago and San Antonio, then on three trips two cars continue to/from West Texas, southern New Mexico and Arizona to Los Angeles. That through service quite often is more successful than the Sunset Limited that carries it. The Eagle was saved from elimination once through the work of former Texas Senator Kay Bailey ..read more

January 21, 2022 – TRA Newswire – Forget about Infrastructure Week. 2022 is shaping up to be Infrastructure Year. With less than 70 days to go before the 18th Annual Southwestern Rail Conference, the buzz about the Infrastructure Act has everyone wondering about the possibilities for future rail projects. Those ideas will be fleshed out during the Premier Rail Conference of the Southwest on Thursday, March 31 and Friday, April 1 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Campbell Centre, Dallas. Two key members that sit on House Transportation, the Honorable Eddie Bernice Johnson and Colin Allred, will be gue ..read more

February 7, 2022 – David Peter Alan, Contributing Editor – Railway Age – Since 2016, Texas landowner James Frederick Miles and the companies that are planning the Texas Central high-speed-rail line between Dallas and the edge of Houston have been engaged in a battle that has worked its way to the top of the court system in the Lone Star State: the Texas Supreme Court. The briefs have been submitted and oral argument was held on Jan. 11. Now it’s time to wait for the Court’s opinion, which will essentially determine whether or not the proposed line will actually be built. Beyond that, the case ..read more

February 6, 2022 – TRA Newswire – The Rail Division at the Texas Department of Transportation is adding new positions and has posted those on the agency website. Two new positions are now open for applicants: a Rail Program Coordinator and a Contract Specialist IV. Another opening is for a Rail Operations Specialist II. The agency also has a need for a Public Transportation Specialist III on public transportation safety oversight. This is the first time in recent memory when newly formed positions have been announced at the rail agency, now headed by recent hire Jeff Davis. The announcement of ..read more