One of the many state/public attempts to bring HSR to Texas was built on a "Texas T" route (or "Texas T-Bone", some branding like that) that would have lines fr

One of the many state/public attempts to bring HSR to Texas was built on a "Texas T" route (or "Texas T-Bone", some branding like that) that would have lines from San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas all meet at Austin, so that if you wanted to go from Houston to Dallas, or Houston to San Antonio, it would go through Austin. Unfortunately as I recall (memory fuzzy, very open to correction) this was most recently attempted in the era of Republican Governors saying "F U" to any Obama administration money, even if it would help their state... It is understandably harder for a private group to start off with a three-line rail network than a one-line rail network, than it would be for a group working with the federal government. Hence when Texas Central Railways that took up the banner, they settled on Houston to Dallas as the most profitable pairing of cities. This is evidenced partly by, at least in the past, that city pairing being the most profitable airline route operated by Southwest. I followed some of the original proposals for routes, and some of them went through College Station directly, versus the chosen route, which goes through Grimes County stop with a rapid bus to College Station. I would have loved to see those happen, but it turns out they would have had many multiples more eminent domain issues. The current route minimizes private land issues by hugging an existing utility corridor as much as it can, while also balancing land that is easy to build on, and having lower environmental impact.