October 6, 2025 - San Antonio Express-News, Richard Webner, Transportation Writer -

During a presentation over the weekend, Caroline Mays, a senior director at the Texas Department of Transportation, displayed three maps not of the state's highways - the agency's usual focus - but of its passenger rail network, showing how it existed in 1930, 1970 and today.

Together, the maps illustrated the near-extinction of inter-city passenger rail in Texas.

In 1930, there was a web of passenger lines all across the state, even in thinly populated West Texas. By 1970, that had withered to something not so different from the three once-daily Amtrak lines available to Texans today: The Texas Eagle, running from San Antonio through Dallas as far north as Chicago; the Heartland Flyer, between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City; and the Sunset Limited, from Los Angeles through San Antonio and Houston, on to New Orleans.

"I work for TxDOT - I'm a highway girl," said Mays, who manages the agency's rail division and other modes as its senior director of planning and modal programs. "But that is not providing options for Texans."

She posed the following question to attendees of the Rail Passengers Association's RailNation: San Antonio conference, at a downtown Holiday Inn: "How can we re-rail Texas?"

Read more:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/huge-opportunity-transit-leaders-keep-182842258.html?

Photo credit: San Antonio Express-News