High-speed Hopes

This high-speed system would get you from Dallas to Austin in just 20 minutes

Travel across Texas in a flash.

A Star Wars-esque innovation promises to put at least some of the nightmarish traffic on Texas’ most clogged roadways — I-35, I-45, and I-10 — in our rearview mirrors.

On Thursday, April 6, a company called Hyperloop One named a proposed high-speed, L-shaped route linking Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Laredo as one of 11 U.S. finalists in a contest to develop a futuristic tube-based system for shuttling passengers and cargo. Hyperloop One says it’ll give three U.S. proposals the green light to proceed.

The 640-mile Hyperloop in Texas would stretch south from Dallas-Fort Worth to Austin, San Antonio, and Laredo, and would stretch east from San Antonio to Houston. Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston would not be connected, as the state’s two largest metro areas tentatively are in line for a much-debated high-speed bullet train.

Organizers of the Texas proposal say a trip from Dallas to Austin would take 19.5 minutes — a far cry from the current three-hour drive (if you’re lucky) between the two cities. Top speeds would reach 700 mph, which is faster than a commercial airliner travels.

Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One explains that “passengers and cargo are loaded into a pod, and accelerate gradually via electric propulsion through a low-pressure tube. The pod quickly lifts above the track using magnetic levitation and glides at airline speeds for long distances due to ultra-low aerodynamic drag.”

Tesla and SpaceX mastermind Elon Musk introduced the tube-based transportation concept in 2013. (Last summer, Transonic Transportation announced plans for a similar Hyperloop connecting San Antonio and Austin.)

“The U.S. has always been a global innovation vanguard — driving advancements in computing, communication and media to rail, automobiles and aeronautics,” says Shervin Pishevar, executive chairman of Hyperloop One. “Now, with Hyperloop One, we are on the brink of the first great breakthrough in transportation technology of the 21st century, eliminating the barriers of time and distance and unlocking vast economic opportunities.”

Even if the Texas plan gets the go-ahead, a Hyperloop system wouldn’t be operating here for a number of years. And there’s no guarantee that the Texas system, or any other proposed tube-based transportation system, will ever be up and running. Hyperloop One is testing a 2-mile track in the desert north of Las Vegas.

A Dallas-based team from construction and engineering giant AECOM is overseeing the Texas proposal. AECOM built Hyperloop One’s test track in Nevada. In 2015, Musk had indicated Texas most likely would host the test track, but that idea didn’t pan out.

Backers of the Texas Hyperloop plan include the University of Texas at Arlington, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), the City of Dallas, Austin’s Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Cap Metro), and the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce.

Pishevar, the Hyperloop One executive chairman, says his company “is at the forefront of a movement to solve one of the planet’s most pressing problems. The brightest minds are coming together at the right time to eliminate the distances and borders that separate economies and cultures.”

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Frisco tops 2026 list of U.S. cities with the most remote workers

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Remote work really is all that and a bag of chips.

North Dallas neighbor Frisco has landed atop a 2026 list of U.S. cities with the most remote workers for the second consecutive year, and an up-and-coming McKinney has surged into the top 10.

The personal finance experts at SmartAsset compared the 357 largest U.S. cities based on the percentage of people who work from home, and additionally calculated the mean commute times for non-remote workers in each city. Remote work prevalence was analyzed using U.S. Census data from 2023-2024.

The findings revealed a third of all employees based in Frisco work remotely, with more than 42,000 remote workers as of 2024. However, the city's remote work prevalence is slightly lower than it was the year before.

"Frisco remains the top city for remote work with 33.7 percent of workers aged 16 and up working from home, despite a slight decline from 34.2 percent a year earlier," the report said.

Frisco residents that don't have the privilege of working remotely spend about 27.3 minutes on average commuting to their workplaces, SmartAsset added. Over 63 percent of Frisco workers drive to their jobs, and less than one percent walk to work.

In McKinney, the prevalence of remote workers in the city surged from 24.2 percent in 2023 to 26.7 percent in 2024. The report additionally found there were 32,798 residents working remotely in McKinney in 2024.

McKinney workers also spend more time commuting than Frisco residents do. The average commute time for in-person work in the city added up to 31.8 minutes. Nearly 70 percent of workers drive to their jobs, and .69 percent report that they walk to work.

Nationally, remote work has declined as more employers push return-to-office mandates, according to SmartAsset. But new reports have indicated these mandates are backfiring as more people seek employment at companies that embrace and prioritize flexible working environments.

"Remote work can open up a lot of opportunities for employees, families, and employers alike," the report's author wrote. "However, shifts into remote work may also cause short-term challenges to some communities – such as loss or redistribution of businesses and services used by commuters."

For remote workers in Dallas-Fort Worth, there's a greater financial incentive to work remote than to commute. An April 2025 U.S. Census Bureau study determined remote workers in the Metroplex earn nearly 51 percent more than their commuting counterparts. Dallas-area remote workers made a median income of $77,000 in 2023, compared to $51,100 for other workers.

"Tradeoffs abound, tracking the evolution of work culture and where the spoils of productivity end up can provide guidance to businesses, politicians, job-seekers, and employers alike," the report said.

The top 10 U.S. cities with the most prevalent remote workforces are:

No. 1 – Frisco, Texas
No. 2 – Berkeley, California
No. 3 – Cary, North Carolina
No. 4 – Boulder, Colorado
No. 5 – Scottsdale, Arizona
No. 6 – Arlington, Virginia
No. 7 – McKinney, Texas
No. 8 – Fishers, Indiana
No. 9 – Boca Raton, Florida
No. 10 – Carlsbad, California

frisco mckinney suburbs remote work innovation smartasset