A commuter rail line between Galveston and Houston has been on the drawing board for so many years that many people have come to think of it as the community’s longest-running fantasy.
But Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas and City Manager Steve LeBlanc returned from Washington, D.C., with the impression that the rail project has a better chance of getting federal funding than any other transportation project.
Thomas and LeBlanc visited officials in Washington about a long list of requests for funds to help the area recover from Hurricane Ike. On that list is $10 million for a preliminary engineering study to run a commuter service along the Galveston-Houston & Henderson line, which runs alongside state Highway 3.
The Galveston representatives carried a letter in support of the commuter rail project that had been signed by the mayors of League City, Texas City, La Marque, Dickinson and Webster, as well as County Judge Jim Yarbrough and Harris County Commissioner Sylvia Garcia. The Galveston representatives bumped into members of the Galveston County Commissioners Court, who were making similar requests for help recovering from the storm.
The commuter rail line would be built in two phases: Galveston to League City, and then from League City to downtown Houston.
The plan for commuter rail has several selling points:
• Passenger demand is estimated at 11,000 trips daily. Getting those people out of cars and into rail cars would improve air quality and reduce congestion on existing highways;
• The cost of widening Interstate 45 to accommodate the volume of traffic that the rail line could handle would be $2.2 billion — the cost of the rail project is estimated at $400 million;
• The ability to move that many passengers quickly would give the region another evacuation route;
• The project would improve mobility in a rapidly growing area — it would, for example, tie into the University of Texas Medical Branch’s plans to develop a campus at Victory Lakes, just off Interstate 45 at FM 646 in League City; and
• The project would allow better use of one of the least-used tracks in the region and would provide an opportunity to replace the old Causeway Bridge, built in 1910, which is one of the most dangerous points on the Intracoastal Waterway — the narrow barge lanes have been a hazard for years.
The project has been on the books for so long that it’s hard to imagine it coming to life soon. But fans of light rail should know, one way or another, fairly soon. Officials requested that the $10 million for the engineering study be included in the 2010 appropriations.
