Trans-Texas Corridor Dies in Name Only -Ben Wear

The American-Statesman
January 7, 2009

The Trans-Texas Corridor, as a name and as a guiding concept of the state’s transportation future, is dead, Texas Department of Transportation Executive Director Amadeo Saenz told an audience of more than a thousand people Tuesday at an Austin hotel. But Saenz acknowledged that all elements of the original plan, including a tollway twin to Interstate 35, could be built as stand-alone projects if and when they are deemed necessary.

Gov. Rick Perry in 2002 unveiled with great fanfare the corridor plan as an almost $200 billion blueprint for the state’s transportation future and then took withering criticism for it in a tough 2006 re-election race. On Tuesday, he said, “The days of the Trans-Texas Corridor are over.”

Critics of the corridor plan and TxDOT officials differed Tuesday over whether the body is truly cold and what would constitute the death of the proposed network of cross-state tollways, railways and utility lines. Planning and environmental studies of the twin to I-35, which would run from San Antonio to Oklahoma, and of I-69 , from Brownsville to Texarkana, will not stop, officials said.

And Perry, talking to reporters while in Iraq on a brief visit to Texas troops there, said, “We really don’t care what name they attach to building infrastructure in the state of Texas. The key is we have to go forward and build it.”

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Trans Texas Corridor Is Dead, Says TexDOT-MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News

This story came across (this piece of double speak) earlier today. It states the Trans-Texas corridor is basically history. If one goes to the "lawyer speak" of the article you'll read:"Make no mistake, the Trans Texas Corridor as we have known it no longer exists," STILL VERY MUCH ALIVE IN A DIFFERENT FORM!


Kvue.com
January 6, 2009

AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Transportation announced this morning that it has officially killed the Trans Texas Corridor, saying that despite the project's visionary aspects, "it is clearly not the choice of Texans."

The announcement comes six years after Gov. Rick Perry shook up the state's transportation and political circles by unveiling an ambitious plan to stretch highways, rail lines and utilities for hundreds of miles along the Interstate 35 and Interstate 69 corridors.

The plan, which would have cost tens of billions of dollars and relied heavily on private toll roads, was hugely controversial.

Amadeo Saenz, executive director of TxDOT, made the announcement that the agency was giving up on the idea at the annual Transportation Forum in Austin.

"Make no mistake, the Trans Texas Corridor as we have known it no longer exists," he said.

Each of the dozens of projects that were linked together under the rubrick of the TTC – including the Loop 9 project in Dallas and the I-69 project in the south – will remain as stand-alone projects, he said.

"The concept has been diminished," he said. "We must recognize the inevitable; the TTC is not the choice of Texans."

The real impact of today's news is symbolic, signaling a strategic retreat by an embattled agency and its chief political sponsor, Gov. Perry.

The timing of this week's meeting is itself indicative of TxDOT's woes. The forum was held just days before lawmakers return to Austin for the 2009 legislative session, during which the future and structure of the agency will be hotly debated.

Saenz said as much in his remarks.

"The Legislature has been clear, they want transformation," he said. "That handwriting is on the wall, in big bold letters."

The TTC was controversial for many reasons, not least of which was that landowners in central and southern Texas recoiled at the thought of huge swaths of acreage being taken by the state through condemnation proceedings.

Others feared that the use of private toll road developers – including firms based in Spain – would amount to foreign ownership of Texas roads.

TxDOT spent years attempting to dispel these concerns. But today's announcement shows that the agency's leaders, and Gov. Perry, had no interest in fighting that fight in the coming session.

Saenz vowed, however, that TxDOT will continue to seek private partnerships for some of the individual toll projects that were once part of the TTC – assuming that the Legislature does not outlaw that practice.