At long last, the Texas Legislature finally found a bullet it didn't like.

Plans for a Houston-to-Dallas bullet train face political obstruction in Austin. More than 20 bills have been filed that would slow the steady progress on this privately funded project that could transform 3-5 hours of start-and-stop traffic into a 90-minute ride.

Put a cowcatcher on the front of that locomotive, because it is about to run into a whole lot of bull.

Rural legislators are throwing everything they can find to stop this investment in our state's two largest economic centers, not to mention the halfway stop near College Station. Opposition groups say they're worried the rail project will eventually require public financial support. Or that the owner, Texas Central Partners, will exploit eminent domain, which can force the sale of private property. Or that the whole thing will simply disrupt a rural landscape.

Particularly confusing are bills like SB 979 and HB 2179, filed last week, that specifically prohibit a private, high-speed rail project from utilizing eminent domain - as if a slower, louder, taxpayer-funded train would be fine.

Legitimate criticism exists over Texas' eminent domain laws, but the need for across-the-board reform is no excuse to stop a single project.

At its core, this opposition to high-speed rail is just another case of NIMBYism - Not In My Backyard. It is a philosophy that blinds people to the world beyond their own home and prevents lawmakers from imagining a future beyond the next election cycle.

If only our state could boast a class of political leaders like those that Houston had a century ago. When Houston was founded, we were nothing more than a muddy town on the banks of Buffalo Bayou. By the turn of the 20th century, we were the city where 17 railroads met the sea.

Investment in transportation infrastructure put Houston at a nexus of industry, commerce and travel. Through work and planning, Houston set itself up to become an indispensable core of growth and success, the connection between a vast inland empire of oil and agriculture and the Port of Houston's access to the greater globe. And, yes, plenty of that rail and port construction required the use of eminent domain.

But if today's politicians had been in charge back then, we'd be the city where nothing met nada. Now they're setting us up for a future where our economic growth will be restricted by lagging infrastructure.

Houston is burdened by a statewide political system beholden to imaginary fears that one day, maybe, taxpayers might end up spending money to support a privately funded rail project. That's in contrast to, say, the money taxpayers absolutely will have to spend expanding and maintaining the roads, freeways and airports that connect the nation's fourth and fifth largest economic centers.

Texas Central Partners wants to spend $12 billion of investors' dollars in a high-speed rail system. It is hard to imagine another time when Texans didn't want a business to spend billions of dollars in our state.

It is time to put imaginary fears to rest and focus on the reality of a state in need of new transportation infrastructure. Our state legislators must brush aside the rail opponents, stare the future of our state head-on and bite the bullet. Support high-speed rail for Texas.