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A high-speed train<\/a> could be transporting Americans to Mexico in less than two hours by 2018.<\/p>\n Politicians from Texas met with Mexican officials in Washington earlier this month to discuss the feasibility of a high-speed passenger rail line from San Antonio, TX to Monterrey, Mexico. The project could begin in 2015, with 2018 as the earliest possible completion year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, told Fox News Latino<\/em><\/a> that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx was perceptive to the plan he presented with Texas Department of Transportation Commissioner Jeff Austin.<\/p>\n “Secretary Foxx and his team are interested,” Cuellar said. “A high-speed rail between San Antonio and Monterrey through Laredo would revolutionize trade and travel between the U.S. and Mexico.”<\/p>\n Though it examined the Midwest, the Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC) estimates that high-speed rail could be three times as energy efficient<\/a> as cars and six times as energy efficient as planes.<\/p>\n “Choosing rail travel over driving or flying will decrease our dependence on foreign oil and reduce air pollution that causes global warming and harms public health,” according to the ELPC.<\/p>\n Mexico estimates its share of the cost for the project will cost about $1.5 billion. Texas is in the midst of a $5.6 million study that initially began as a feasibility examination of a railway from South Texas to Oklahoma. The study has been expanded to look at the Texas-to-Mexico route.<\/p>\n The San Antonio-to-Monterrey trip takes about five hours to drive, but the proposed rail would take less than two hours.<\/p>\n “The only real obstacle we can see to this project is the American study,” said Marco Antonio Gonzalez Valdez, a congressman from Nuevo León, Mexico. “The project does not begin until the study is complete.”<\/p>\n Visit EcoWatch’s TRANSPORTATION<\/a><\/b><\/b> page for more related news on this topic.<\/b><\/p>\n
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