Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Texas has major catching-up to do in the race against other states for federal money to advance intercity passenger rail projects, including high-speed rail. Austin needs to make a robust application that highlights something we know in Texas but that may be lost elsewhere: This is a heavily urbanized state with some of the nation's most congested stretches of interstate.

Still, Harvard economist Edward Glaeser singled out Texas in questioning the Obama administration's imperative to improve, modernize and revolutionize passenger rail. He wrote recently in the Boston Globe :

Now the administration wants Americans to envision high-speed rail lines in the wide-open spaces of Texas. The president has painted a vision: "Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination." What's wrong with this picture?

Answer: Nothing. Not for anyone who ever drove I-35 and got stuck in a convoy of trucks. Not for anyone who has seen statistics on the volume of NAFTA-fueled freight hauled across Texas roadways. Not for anyone who feels like commercial development along the Dallas-to-Austin drive is only occasionally broken up by farmland.

In contrast to other states, Texas has been neglectful in not exploring and advocating improved passenger rail as an intercity option. California has been at it for a while, investing its own money in planning a bullet train route along the coast.

Trying to get up to speed, Texas lawmakers passed a bill this spring calling for a passenger-rail strategy. It's about time.

Short term: The effort means Texas can vie for some of the $8 billion in stimulus money that Washington is offering for ready-to-go rail-enhancement projects, along with $5 billion more in coming years. The money mostly will upgrade current routes and service in what the Obama administration calls a "down payment" on the passenger network of the future. North Texas is looking to land tens of millions of that, including rail upgrades for Amtrak's Heartland Flyer to the north and Texas Eagle to the east.

Longer term: Applying for stimulus money can put Texas in the hunt for serious planning money for high-speed trains that travel 200 mph and faster between population centers.

Government studies and transportation experts say that the benefits of high-speed rail investment still must be proven and that performance projections have been overly optimistic. Skepticism may be even more pronounced in Texas, where ridership of the Eagle was about 250,000 in the last fiscal year – in the neighborhood of daily traffic on busy sections of North Central Expressway.

Even so, inner-city rail travel has been rising in Texas. Forgoing the chance to improve what passenger service we have on the ground now would be foolhardy. Nor should this state fail to develop a vision for how the public could be better served by new transportation technology and funding in the future.