More precisely, the project is not dead yet. After reading up on it though I have a bad feeling. Let's assume optimistically that the eminent domain bill doesn't pass, or they build despite it. Metcalf's bill, without even making it out of the committee, already forced them into "utility corridor", which skips population centers between Houston and Dallas. This makes it a two big cities project, which is at best a nuisance to everybody in between, so constant pushback in the legislature. T-bone failed to materialize even in some small part, and it had Perry's support. I am not sure about Dallas, but in Houston at the moment they do not have a viable path from Northwest TC to downtown, and there is no well connected downtown location, which is track accessible, anyway. The prices are planned to be "comparable" to airlines. In places where trains are common one of the main attractions is that they are substantially cheaper than planes, it doesn't work on pure convenience. But with the station at Northwest TC there is not even that, it is not that different from going to the Hobby airport. Except Hobby has connections to a variety of destinations, and the train is not part of any rail network, it's to Dallas only. HSR has high security risks, hence high insurance costs. Cooks do not derail freight trains often because human toll is low, but with 200 miles of track and 205 mph the bullet train is an attractive soft target. Even if just a bad accident happens and riders are scared off TCR is unlikely to survive, same as many airlines after 9/11. TCR project is interesting as a proof of principle. Loudest objections to publicly funded passenger rail are that it is a "government boondogle". But now a private venture faces the same kind of opposition from similar sources. It is pushed into building not where people are, but where it steps the least on somebody's toes. It is deprived of benefits, like eminent domain, that pipeline, utility and road builders get as a matter of course. It is suggested to be subjected to heckler's veto. Perhaps the underlying reason is simply that Texas doesn't have sufficient population density, but it is interesting to see how it works itself through the political system. Support is more of a "sounds good" type, while opposition is intense and mobilized. I doubt that a large scale rail project has a chance in Texas until political realignment happens for some reason. This story reminded me the fate of the Universities line in Houston. First "community preferred alternative" that made trains turn 6 times in half as many blocks, and took them away from TSU, then a ban on federal funding and local tax funding along Richmond. And along Westpark, as "suggested" by Culberson, it is largely pointless.