On August 24, the Dallas City Council will consider a cooperation agreement between the City and Texas Central Holdings. Texas Central plans to design, construct and operate a private high-speed passenger rail line between Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston.

The purpose of the agreement is to facilitate expedited review of the major private infrastructure project through the necessary federal, state and local review processes, without any presumption of support by the City of Dallas at this stage. A draft of the Cooperation Agreement will be provided to the Council next week.

The Agreement will provide a funding mechanism to enable Texas Central Holdings to cover costs incurred by the City for expedited review and provide external expertise to assist the City with creating an urban design and economic development vision for the area around the proposed Downtown Dallas high speed rail station.

It will commit Texas Central to participate in City-hosted community awareness meetings on the project. It will also provide for the City and Texas Central to work towards defining a master agreement or additional agreements to be brought to Council for consideration in the future, in order to address more detailed aspects of planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of the proposed high speed rail within the City of Dallas.

On August 24, the Council will also consider two additional related actions needed to enable expedited review of the high speed rail project through the Section 408 permit application process by which permission will be sought for the high speed rail project to be constructed and operated within the Trinity River Floodway. Funding for these two actions will be provided by Texas Central through the Cooperation Agreement:

• A memorandum of agreement with the Department of the Army for expedited Section 408 review by the Army Corps of Engineers
• A contract with HNTB Corporation to provide specialized consultant expertise to the City related to the Section 408 review process.