If the ultimate concept of I-14 is to consolidate the TX/LA corridors with the proposed "14th Amendment Highway" in MS/AL/GA, than it's less of a long shot.
Politicians can spam the idea all they want. Actually paying for it and building it is an entirely different matter.
There are numerous highway projects of much greater importance in Texas and Louisiana that need to be completed well ahead of this I-14 nonsense. Mississippi is too broke to fund their portion of I-69 and The Great River Bridge. They're having a hard enough time just trying to bring US-78 up to Interstate standards to sign it as I-22. This I-14 deal would be a much more costly project than any of those existing needs.
Alabama has long wanted an Interstate going West out of Montgomery to meet up with I-20 at the MS border. That span could just as easily be numbered as an extension of I-85 as any number of other concepts that have been floated through the years, like an I-16 extension or this I-14 idea. But, again, where is the funding coming from to built this?
Georgia has plenty of its own upgrade needs for existing highways, particularly in the metro Atlanta area.
Overall, this I-14 project looks like a giant, un-funded mandate. The route will be so crooked, if ever completed, that it won't draw very much traffic at all off the I-20 and I-10 corridors.
I-14 would've been better suited for connecting Houston to Austin, and then back to I-10 in west Texas, IMO, since it would give Austin an interstate connection to the East and West coasts. The currently designated section of I-14 could've easily became an I-x35.
Houston to Austin is a far more legitimate corridor to target with an Interstate highway upgrade. I guess now it will have to be another I-12 rather than I-14.
Surely they will come up with something to satisfy the need for an interstate-standard Houston-Austin corridor. I could be wrong, but I'm not sure if a western I-12 would be a good idea, as I think it might cause confusion due to being in such close proximity to the existing, eastern Interstate 12.
I don't see any problem with calling a Houston-Austin Interstate I-12. The Interstate system already has numerous duplicate 2di routes (I-74, I-76, I-84, I-88), disconnected 2di routes (I-49, I-69) and other additional duplicate routes that may be added to the system (I-66, I-87).
I think the Houston-Austin route is too long to carry a 3-digit designation. That corridor could easily be expanded both East (to Beaumont) and West (to the US-290/I-10 interchange in West Texas). The only alternative I see to "I-12" is a letter suffix route, like "I-10N." That would open a whole can of worms on how to treat the existing I-10 route. In the past certain Interstates like I-5, I-15, I-70 and I-80 had suffixed routes while they kept their parent number from being suffixed.