Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Baylor University professor Don Greene

The Trans-Texas Corridor plan apparently has fallen apart, but in its wake, a new proposal for high-speed rail in Texas seems to be gaining supporters.

Bullet trains in Texas are being touted again in a big way, and backers who hope to have a $12 billion to $18 billion network of high-speed trains running by 2020 say their proposal will succeed.

Fifteen years ago, a state high-speed rail plan went nowhere. The new push touts a so-called Texas T-Bone corridor that would run between cities including Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Waco.

Baylor University professor Don Greene, who served on the Trans-Texas Corridor Advisory Board, said the 2020 timeline is ambitious.

Gaining needed financing, eminent-domain issues and other planning logistics likely would take more than 11 years, Greene said.

“I think 2020 is optimistic, but we could see it in our lifetimes, I’d like to think,” Greene said of the high-speed rail network. “I’m looking over the history (of high-speed rail discussions), and it takes a long time to move these projects ahead. My lack of optimism is based on past history, though, broadly speaking, absolutely I’m in favor of (the plan).”

Under the plan, the train would travel at an average speed of 200 mph and would run to stations at airports. More than 70 percent of Texans live in areas that would be served, the Houston Chronicle reported.

“In the past, high-speed rail was not completed in Texas primarily because it was a top-down model driven by lobbyists out of Austin,” said former Harris County Judge Robert Eckels, chairman of the nonprofit Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corp.

What excites Greene about the current discussions is that it’s a “bottom-up” model, with private financing and citizens providing the impetus.

“What’s interesting about the ‘T-Bone’ is that it’s being sponsored not by (the Texas Department of Transportation) but by businessmen and planners in the Houston area,” he said.

Proponents told lawmakers during a transportation meeting Wednesday that they’re reaching out to former opponents such as Southwest Airlines, which fought the last high-speed rail project as a potential competitor.

Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said the airline is neutral on the proposal.

Because the plan’s supporters want it to be privately financed, they acknowledge they’ll need the markets to change to get the investment going.

They’re also seeking state help, including tax exemptions for companies that would build the project and some $100 million for environmental and market studies.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry said the project currently is not viable without large government subsidies but will become more feasible as the population grows and increases density around Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio.

Perry believes high-speed rail “could very well be in the future of Texas,” spokeswoman Allison Castle said.

Chris Evilia of the city of Waco’s Metropolitan Planning Organization told the Tribune-Herald earlier this month that he has been in discussions with transportation officials in Dallas that would include Waco as a high-speed rail hub. One possible scenario would have an elevated rail making a stop at Waco’s downtown bus station, from which rail riders could catch a bus to just about any location in Waco, Evilia said.