Texas transportation officials have fresh numbers that make rail between Austin and San Antonio look a lot more real on paper, even if the tracks themselves are another story.
This week, TxDOT released a new study that says upgraded tracks between San Antonio and Austin could support up to eight daily round trips and attract roughly 2,300 riders a day. The report outlines five possible routes, estimates travel times could drop to about two hours, and flags both high upfront construction costs and steep annual operating bills. Then comes the catch: Union Pacific owns the key corridor and has not signaled it wants more passenger trains on its rails.
As reported by the San Antonio Express-News, TxDOT modeled service levels of two, four and eight daily round trips and stacked them up against the current once-daily Amtrak Texas Eagle. The Express-News notes that Union Pacific declined to participate in the agency’s study and told local leaders in a 2024 letter that it is prioritizing freight capacity over new passenger service.
What the study recommends
The state’s Capital-Alamo Connections effort lays out corridor options, identifies needed infrastructure and tools for regional coordination, and frames passenger rail as one way to take pressure off chronically clogged I-35, according to TxDOT. Modeling that TxDOT presented to the Texas Passenger Rail Advisory Committee suggests trains could reach speeds of up to 79 mph after upgrades and estimates about 2,337 daily riders if the corridor ran eight round trips a day.
Union Pacific holds the keys
Any plan that leans on the existing freight corridor needs the freight railroad’s cooperation, and that has been the recurring sticking point for roughly two decades. The San Antonio Express-News reports that Union Pacific declined to assist with the latest study and previously pulled out of a partnership about a decade ago, leaving officials to look harder at alignments that do not depend on the company’s goodwill.
Price tag and operations
The cost estimates come in a wide band, depending on which alignment gets picked and how frequently the trains run. Scenarios that rely on the UP corridor range from roughly $810 million to $1.9 billion in capital work, and the study pegs annual maintenance and operations at about $60 million for an eight-round-trip schedule, according to technical briefings summarized by Texas Rail Advocates. The project list includes new signals, passing tracks and an operations and maintenance facility. Modelers also warn that freight traffic on the corridor could grow around 3 percent per year, which would mean roughly 10 more trains a day by mid-century, a trend that makes sharing the line more complicated.
What comes next
Looking for a way around the Union Pacific problem, Travis County hired engineering firm HNTB to study an alternate route that would use the SH-130 right of way and elevated structures along I-10 to reach San Antonio, an option meant to sidestep dependence on the freight railroad, International Railway Journal reports. From there, officials face a long checklist: environmental review, figuring out how to pay for it, choosing station locations and negotiating access across any freight corridors that still factor into the plan. Planners say significant federal grants or a change of heart from the railroad about hosting passenger trains will be required before any of these ideas move beyond the feasibility stage.
For now, Amtrak’s Texas Eagle remains the only daily rail link between Austin and San Antonio, a single long-distance train that underscores how much the timetable and reliability would have to change for the corridor to work for commuters, according to Amtrak.
TxDOT’s new work gives local and regional leaders fresh data to make the case for state or federal investment. Whether those numbers ever translate into trains on the ground will likely depend on money, politics and a freight railroad that has so far kept passenger service at arm’s length.
