High Speed Rail HSR (Houston - DFW Dallas Fort Worth) (FKA Texas Central )

John_Perkowski wrote: ↑Tue Apr 23, 2024 4:18 pm Admin note

If you are a contract law attorney, we invite you to share your knowledge here.

There's a lot more at play than just a few headline soundbytes. With regard to the "buy american" questions, Amtrak is a private entity that the feds own 100pct of preferred stock (common owned by BNSF et al) and controls by naming directors. There are probably easy ways to get around Buy American requirements, if they even are requirements or just policy set by management who knows what their instructions are from above.

With regard to the existing contracts, they may be very valid and useful and since they were signed before Amtrak's influence, you can't retroactively cancel them.

With regard to "we're in the driver seat", I'd like to see more detail. Was the operation sold to Amtrak? Strategic partnership? Operations subcontractor? "driver seat" is not a term of art and tells us nothing about this agreement. Also recall that Virgin was "in the driver seat" at Brightline for a hot minute and that didn't last.

Finally, the "it was planned for bankruptcy" doesn't work for me. I know places that did this and someone has to benefit to make this work. If Texas Central started up and then filed, who benefits? Not TC, not the investors, not all the creditors they still owe money to. The state of Texas was outwardly against the project. Who does that leave?