Posted on 04/06/2008 1:02:09 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
For Peyton Gilbert, the battle over the Trans-Texas Corridor is reminiscent of the moment in 1836 when Lt. Col. William Travis drew a line in the sand at the Alamo and invited those willing to fight thousands of Mexican soldiers to step across.
"That line in the sand is the Trans-Texas Corridor, and it's a threat to our sovereignty again, just like at the Alamo," said Gilbert, 14, who is from Whitehouse, near Tyler.
Gilbert was among a large crowd of people who marched down Congress Avenue to the Capitol on Saturday afternoon to demonstrate against the proposed highway-rail-utility corridor and the placement of toll roads on existing freeways. The corridor would go from the Texas-Mexico border to the Oklahoma state line and have special trucking lanes, rail lines and communications and utility cables.
Opponents say Gov. Rick Perry's plan for 4,000 miles of cross-state tollways will usurp private land, will use private companies to operate toll roads and could hurt the environment. The corridor is slated to be built by private contractors, primarily Spanish firm Cintra.
"In a nutshell, we are against it because of the devastation it's going to cause rural and urban landowners, the effect it will have on the middle class and the consequences it will have on our liberty," said Hank Gilbert of Texas TURF, or Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom, the San Antonio-based group that organized Saturday's rally.
"TxDOT says these corridors are for trade out of Mexico and ultimately China, but it's Texans who will have to pay out the nose for it," said Gilbert, Peyton's father.
Both spoke at the rally.
Supporters of the corridor and toll roads say they are the only way to accommodate the state's growth without increasing gasoline taxes.
"Texans need and deserve real solutions to our growing traffic challenges, not just blind opposition to new lane and highway construction," said Bill Noble, a spokesman for Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation, a pro-tollway group. "Every day we delay building new roads means higher construction costs and more frustration for drivers."
In the warm, breezy spring weather, most rally participants carried signs with slogans like "No TTC!" and "Who does TTC benefit?" while listening to the band the Texicans play "The Trans-Texas Corridor Blues."
Many sported shirts and paraphernalia from Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Paul's presidential campaign, expressing their support for the Libertarian-leaning lawmaker.
"Ron Paul stands up for the Constitution," said Charles Walker, who hails from Lake Jackson, which is in the lawmaker's district. "He was one of the original people to oppose the corridor."
© 2008 The Associated Press
April 5, 2008
AUSTIN — A crowd marched through the heart of downtown Austin to the state Capitol on Saturday to protest Gov. Rick Perry's plan for 4,000 miles of toll roads across Texas.
The Trans-Texas Corridor, a proposed network of superhighway toll roads, rankles opponents who characterize it as the largest government grab of private property in the state's history and an unneeded and improper expansion of toll roads.
Rally participants carried signs with slogans like "No TTC!" and "Whodoes TTC benefit?" while listening to the band the Texicans play "The Trans-Texas Corridor Blues," the Austin American-Statesman reported for its Sunday editions.
"In a nutshell, we are against it because of the devastation it's going to cause rural and urban landowners, the effect it will have on the middle class and the consequences it will have on our liberty," said Hank Gilbert of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom.
Texas Department of Transportation officials and Perry have defended the project as necessary to address future traffic concerns in one of the nation's fastest-growing states. They also say the project is vital because of insufficient road revenues from the state gas tax and the federal government.
Cost of the project has been estimated at approaching $200 billion, and it could take as long as 50 years to complete.
Supporters of the corridor and toll roads say they are the only way the state's growth can be accommodated without hiking gasoline taxes.
"Texans need and deserve real solutions to our growing traffic challenges, not just blind opposition to new lane and highway construction," said Bill Noble, a spokesman for Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation, a pro-toll roads group. "Every day we delay building new roads means higher construction costs and more frustration for drivers."
Texans protest TxDOT's plans for corridor, tolls
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
Money phrase, “Who does it benefit?”..
What a mile deep pile of horse s—t. How many hundred million or billion gallons of gas do Texas citizens buy each year? Each gallon garners at least $0.50 cents in transportation dollars, perhaps a lot more. Let’s remember that gasoline is probably taxed several times along the say to the pump, where it is taxed again.
Yes large highway projects cost billions, but the state doesn’t have to sit down and draft a check for the project in advance. It can pay as it goes, and borrow upon future tax revenues. Ten, twenty or even thirty years of taxes will buy you a awful lot of highway.
I’m here to tell you, these super highway corridors are going in if they have to be built over the grave sights of tens of thousands of Texans in the process.
And you folks thought this was representative government, answerable to the people.
LMAO
Welcome to reality. We’ve lost major portions of our representative government, and are losing more every day.
It’s time for the sheeple to ban together and speak with a unified voice when it comes to nonsense like this.
Why should we build a massive corridor so that Chinese goods can be offloaded at Mexican ports, just so we can put more U.S. citizen out of work? Honest to God folks, where does it end.
I’ve certainly had enough. Has anyone else?
U. S. politicians, U. S. corporations, the Mexican government and Mexican citizens to the citizens of Texas...
“All your corridors are belong to us.”
As you said, the TTC will bring cheap Chinese goods from Mexican harbors into Texas via smog-spewing Mexican trucks---at the cost of many American jobs, not to mention the safety of our roads. It will also provide a "superhighway" for drugs and illegal aliens.
I hope the Texans fight like Hell. We should all be there with them. The Nafta Superhighway will damage more than Texas.
I’m willing to fly over there and join in a massive protest. Name the day and time, I’m there.
ping
Count me in.
Here’s the problem, plain and simple:
Among TXDOT’s stated goals are to decrease pollution and congestion. Yet these corridor plans condense traffic, causing just the opposite to happen.
We need to DISPERSE traffic across Texas rather than continuing to CONDENSE traffic in the same areas, particularly DFW.
I-35, for example, is crowded and unpleasant to drive. In many areas, it has reached capacity. Vehicles driving north on I-35 are all sent through DFW.
I’d like to see honest statistics on how many of those vehicles actually are headed to DFW and how many are just going through there because it’s the only freeway that takes them where they want to go.
A driver who wants to get from San Antonio or Austin to Oklahoma City could get there just as easily if there was a good road to Wichita Falls. Same with Houston to Tyler on the way to Tulsa.
Oklahoma already has turnpikes that start at the Texas border at Wichita Falls and Paris/Hugo. TXDOT should link to them.
West Texas is underserved. Towns there would grow and keep industry and their schools if they had highways.
But because of all the lobbying, hollering, demanding, and yammering from business interests in DFW, all roads are built through or around the same old spot. And North Texas continues to get too much traffic and too much pollution, federal air quality sanctions, congestion, headaches.
Our state is being raped, skewered, to serve international shipping interests. It is not to benefit Texas or those of us who live here.
The TTC needs to be completely scrapped and a better plan developed with smaller divided highways throughout the state where they’re wanted and needed, linking communities that want them, dispersing traffic and exhaust, and serving the populace not the politicians.
Let Chinese and Mexican goods travel, if they must, through the arid and untillable deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. And send Rick Perry to oversee construction.
Thanks
Couldn’t find anything to argue about there. Good post.
Done ;-)
Thanks, but no thanks, to your suggestion for Arizona.
You are a day late and a dollar short, as we are getting our own corridor.
Our corridor will connect to Punta Colonet on Baja so that China can sent millions and millions of containers bypassing American labor.
TTC gets all the publicity while Canamex gets built. All eyes are on Texas; CANAMEX flies pretty much under the radar.
So fear not, Arizona too, is being skewered! Before it’s over most states will be.
Union Pacific railroad wanted to put their new route right across prime agricultural lands..NOT the desert. They faced opposition. So much for transparency...now UP isn’t talking.
btt
BTTT
BTW: I was in downtown Austin and witnessed the march. There were folks from Ark and LA looking out for their interests. Didn't see any Okies. (they haven't figured out that the TTC won't stop at the Texas border) Texas is definitely not in this alone.
bttt
Trans-Texas Corridor – Because there are issues of confiscation of private land, State and National sovereignty and other similar concerns, we urge the repeal of the Trans-Texas Corridor legislation.
But Rick Perry doesn't care. Perry is one of the 4 governors (Perry, Richardson, Napolitano, Schwartzenegger) who, under McCain's new scheme, would "certify" that the border is "secure" before McCain proceeded with amnesty.
Just one reason I don't trust McCain.
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