(photo: Deutsche Bahn)

This Friday, the Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation (THSRTC) is holding an event (by invite, booked full) to discuss high speed passenger rail between Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because a very similar idea was studied in the early 1990s. Ultimately, the Texas TGV project failed because of uncertain financing and political opposition.

So what’s different now? Gas prices are higher, and people are somewhat more environmentally conscious. There are successful rail transit systems in Houston and Dallas that could act as local feeders and that have left more people open to rail in general. And the project has the support of Continental and American Airlines, which may act as a counterweight to Southwest, whose lobbying was instrumental in killing the project last time around. Is that enough?

The more important question, though, is whether the project fills a need.

THSRTC “Texas T-Bone” proposal envisions a new rail line paralleling I-35 from San Antonio via Austin, Temple, and Waco to Dallas Fort Worth (this route could follow the Trans-Texas Corridor to some extent, but unlike the TTC it would have to go into cities, not past their fringes), and another from Houston via College Station to Temple. Their web site looks at this route only in broad strokes, so let’s get a bit more specific about stations:

(base map: Texas population density, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Texas_population_map.png)

This system looks roundabout: you’d never consider driving from Houston to Austin via College Station. But speed has a way of making up for that. At 200 mph — the design speed for current French, German, and Japanese steel-wheel-on-steel-rail high speed trains — we’d have travel times, including stops, like this:

Those times are quite competitive with air travel. Trains don’t need security screening like planes do — there’s no way to highjack a train, nor can it be blown out of the sky. That saves at least half an hour compared to the plane trip. And stations would be closer to many destinations — on a trip from Downtown Houston to Downtown Dallas, one could save an hour on travel time. Trains are also much more reliable than planes: Spain’s AVE gives riders their money back when the train is more than 5 minutes late, and they’ve only had to pay out 0.16% of the time. And, of course, a trains is much more comfortable than a plane: wide seats, more legroom, space to walk around, a cafe car, onboard wifi, even seats arranged around a table for meetings en route.

Experience from across the world indicates that high speed rail is competitive with planes on trip under four hours. Some examples:

The demand for service between Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio is clearly there: Southwest flies Houston-Dallas 29 times a day, Continental 12 times, and American 6 times. But there’s demand from the smaller cities, too. Places like College Station and Waco don’t get very good airline service now; they would be much better connect then they are now. And rail service would likely take travelers off the highway, too. Overall, this system would serve Houston’s 4 biggest metropolitan areas as well as 3 smaller ones, adding up to 75% of the state’s population.

The participation of Continental and American adds another travel market. Both airlines already operate codeshares with high speed rail in the Northeast, France, and Germany, and the German service even includes checked baggage on the train that’s seamlessly transferred to the plane. A high speed rail system in Texas could act as an integral part of their route network. To “fly” from Austin to Paris, for example, you could check luggage and get boarding passes at the Downtown Austin station, take the train to IAH, then go through security and board the plane without having to deal with your luggage again. The same baggage facilties would also mean that a Houston traveler could check in at the Downtown Intermodal Center, then take the train to IAH for a flight.

Portions of the route would also serve a commuter market. A station in the Woodlands, for example, would make sense as a way for people from north and northwest Houston to catch the train to Dallas. But it would also become a commuter facility, probably with extra local trains going only this far. The same kind of thing would happen in Round Rock.

The big question: money. To be fast, a rail line has to be relatively straight, and it has to be grade-seprated. You can’t get 200 mph on existing rail lines; you need to build new ones (though they can follow existing highways or rail lines to minimize impacts.) In urban areas, tunneling may well be required. This isn’t as big a project as, say, the Trans-Texas Corridor. But it is big and expensive.

So far, the only high speed rail in the United States (and it just barely qualifies as high speed) is in the Northeast, on a route built to high standards and electrified in the 1930s. In Texas, we’d need to start from scratch. California is the state that’s come closest to doing this; the California High Speed Rail Authority has completed environmental studies for a San Diego-Los Angeles-Bakersfield-Fresno-Stockton-San Francisco/Sacramento system, the governor is in a support, and a ballot measure will go to the voters next year. Texas doesn’t have the same level of congestion (on highways or airports) or the developed local and regional transit service that California does. But we do have populous urban centers close enough together, and a history of ambitious public works. We can do it. The question is whether we want to spend the money to do it.

Speed on down to our forums with your thoughts.