Dive Brief:

• A $10 billion project funded without any public-sector money, is gradually working its way toward becoming the first truly high-speed rail service in the United States.
• Texas Central Railway, which is working with Central Japan Railway, hopes to put a 200-mph N700-I Bullet Train into operation between Dallas and Houston by 2021.
• Richard Lawless, who formerly worked for the CIA in Japan and rode high-speed rail there and was deputy undersecretary of defense for Asia and Pacific security affairs for President George W. Bush, is the for-profit company's CEO and he says the company has been progressing "under the radar" for the past four years.

Dive Insight:

It's not known if Texas Central has talked with any construction firms at this point. If Lawless and his backers can get the line running on their schedule in the 50,000-commuter corridor, they would be eight years ahead of the scheduled start of California's LA-San Francisco bullet-train service.