Final nail in Trans Texas Corridor's coffin

The Texas Department of Transportation is once and for all pulling the plug on the Trans Texas Corridor, the controversial plan to build toll roads and utility lines across the state, an official said.

"The reason that's being given for the no-build option is that people don't want it," Texas Transportation Commission member Bill Meadows of Fort Worth said Tuesday in a phone interview. "They said 'Hell no.' "

The Trans Texas Corridor was originally pitched as an innovative way to pay for congestion improvements, and reduce truck and train gridlock in metro areas. But opponents seized upon several hotly contested components of the plan, including the impact of tolls on Texans' pocketbooks, the infusion of foreign influence in toll investment and the taking of such a massive amount of private property necessary to build the roads.

Earlier this year, state officials announced the Trans Texas Corridor was essentially dead, in large part because of public outrage and a backlash from state legislators who felt the transportation department had overstepped its bounds. But despite that announcement, the planning process for the Trans Texas Corridor continued behind the scenes. A consortium led by Cintra of Madrid, Spain and Zachry Construction of San Antonio had prepared a master plan, and a detailed environmental study of the TTC-35 corridor between Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio was underway.

Well, on Wednesday, Texas Department of Transportation officials plan to hold a news conference in Austin to announce that they've selected the "no build" option for the TTC-35 Corridor, which formally brings an end to the project, Meadows said. "What we basically are doing is we are terminating the process. It's the no-build option," he said. "Formally, absolutely, TTC-35 is dead. We are canceling the contract with Zachry."

-- Gordon Dickson

Comments

[r crews]

its about time some one called a spade a spade.hopefuully we will corral the politics of greed.zachryconstruction can make its money some where besides texashow about mexico

[Austin]

Convenient. The day after the Farm Bureau endorses KBH over former fave Rick Perry. So TTC-35 is "dead" - for now. What about the other projects? They'll all be resurrected like Frankenstein if Perry is re-elected.

[Dennis Killy]

Have no fear ... the monument builders and other gutless wonders will continue to waste citizen/taxpayer dollars in the name of progress.

The North Texas "Regional Rail" is another $35 BILLION abortion which continues to be on the top shelve for North Texas Good-Old-Boys. Ninety cents of every dollar wasted will come out of taxpayers pockets ... forever and ever.

Dennis Killy, Arlington

[oly]

Now - we need to FIRE the politicians who tried to pull the fast one - starting with our GOvernor-Socialist leader Perry

[TexPIRG]

Governor Perry's TTC would have been funded using Comprehensive Development Agreements (CDAs), a privatized toll road arrangement. Opposition to the Governor’s plan was so widespread and heated that the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has declared the TTC and various segments of the TTC “dead.”

Road privatization offers a hard-to-resist “quick fix” for state politicians. But without adequate public protections, privatization can have hidden costs and big potential downsides for Texans. Private infrastructure deals are fraught with problems and often characterized by the same leveraging of debt, conflicts of interest, and reckless shifting of risk that triggered the recent financial crisis. Furthermore, these deals, which can stretch as long as 99 years, are not “flexible.” Their appeal to investors is that future toll hikes are locked in.

To protect the public, Texas and its local governments should avoid privatization of existing roadways, and allow for private deals to construct new roadways only with the strongest protections to ensure transparency, full value for taxpayers, and continued public control of transportation policy.

Read NEW TexPIRG fact sheet on road privatization in Texas here: http://www.texpirg.org/stop-bad-road-privatization

[Robert Cook]

Another major problem was the TTC never goes to or through any major Texas city. Who wants to go thirty miles out of the way. The Texas super colliding super highway is gone for now. One good result is good bye Perry and hello Governor Kay.

[Garl B. Latham]

Well...

I was going to chime in with one of my patented diatribes - and then I read Dennis Killy's post.

Since we're apparently choosing slavery to our auto-centric culture over any logical alternative, why do we claim the right to gainsay ANY plan which would help maintain the status-quo just a little while longer?!

My disgust knows no bounds.

Garl B. Latham
Dallas

[Messenger bag]

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.