Driving from Phoenix to Tucson should take a shade under two hours. But traffic pushes that up by forty minutes or an hour, at times–no one’s idea of a nice day trip, much less a commute. But what if you could hop on a train that would get you there in thirty minutes? No security lines at the airport, no flight delays: just thirty minutes at a blazing 220 miles per hour, traveling in science fiction-esque comfort aboard a completely solar-powered train.

This is where it gets interesting, right? Because sure, high-speed trains have been around for ages, though not in this country (Japan was running trains at 200mph even in the ’70s, followed shortly by France, and the UK brought over Japanese-built high speed trains for certain routes a couple years back). And with President Obama’s announcement that at last we may see a whole network of them on home soil, we’re sure to be hearing a lot more about it. But an entirely solar-powered route–now, that’s news.

It’s hardly a sure thing. This is an idea in relative infancy, just at the stage where money is being collected for economic analyses, and its forbiddingly high price tag ($27 billion just for the direct route; the developers are also proposing a route that would take twice as long and make a few stops along the way). However, the Tucson-based developers are optimistic about the plan’s adoption. They claim the train could start running in less than ten years.

High-speed trains don’t use fossil fuels, so it’s not a simple scenario of solar-used, oil-saved. They do consume staggering amounts of electricity, though, and nearly all grid power still comes from conventional sources. The solar electricity for the train would come from pole-mounted panels lining the track. Exposed to the nearly ceaseless Arizona sunshine, these panels would have to produce 110MW to run the service. It’s a compact design and plays into the state’s need for distributed generation of renewable resources. It’s also possible that with enough solar capacity installed, there could be net excess generation available to sell back to the grid and help offset operating costs.

Since this project would take ten years (at least–let’s be honest) to implement, Arizona’s grid should at that point be more heavily reliant on solar and other renewable energies. Arizona’s Environmental Portfolio Standard–or to the rest of us, its RPS–dictates that 25% of the state’s electricity must be from renewable energy sources by 2025. Who knows, they may end up blowing past that goal–the state offers great incentives for residential, industrial, and commercial solar adoption, as well as encouraging other technologies. (If you’re interested in solar in Arizona, you should definitely let us help you figure out if it’s right for you–fill out our web form.) All this means that whatever electricity the Solar Bullet would still need to draw from the grid has a better chance of being clean itself.

Financially, we have yet to see predictions of how much money the track-side solar panels would save in traditional energy costs. If the developers successfully raise the money for tax and economic analyses, I trust they will make the results of those studies public as soon as possible.

Retired civil engineer Bill Gaither is behind the Solar Bullet, together with partner Raymond Wright. The two have a grander plan than just Tucson-Phoenix, imagining the line going down to Nogales on the Mexican border and out to the Grand Canyon, and short-range electric cars for rent at each station to encourage commuters reluctant to be parted from the convenience of self-directed transit. But first things first: the Solar Bullet is at this stage hardly more than a shiny, well-devised dream. It’s exciting and it’s though-provoking, though, like all the best dreams are. We’ll keep you posted.