Amtrak that went Dallas to CS to Houston was fine. It was great to take home for a weekend, took about the same time and cost similar to what it would cost to drive. When they decided to kill it, they switched it to an idiotic schedule that they knew people wouldn't use, only Tuesday and Thursday, I think, so people really couldn't use it to get away for a weekend any more. Before, you could either just miss one day of work/school or less. I purposely didn't have MWF classes too late so I could actually take the train on a Friday without skipping class (think it left at around 11 AM) and came back Sunday night. No way could I skip enough days for Tuesday/Thursday to be reasonable. If they wanted to only have it run twice a week, they could've done any combo of Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and still had riders. They switched to that useless schedule, waited for ridership to drop to nothing, and then killed the route completely. I heard they did it on purpose because the same rails are used for Union Pacific and they didn't want Amtrak tying it up when cargo could be coming through. Track might actually belong to UP (think it does at least locally).
As to bullet train, price will be a major decider on if people use it. If the ticket costs around the amount of a plane ticket, I think it's a list less likely than if it's $50.