Free Republic

State transportation officials are poised to issue billions of dollars in debt to help speed road construction, a move that will keep Dallas-area projects on schedule for now but will do little to shore up the state's long-term road-funding crisis. The Texas Department of Transportation will likely begin issuing $1.5 billion in bonds within 60 days, pending the recovery of the nation's upended credit markets, and is taking steps to borrow another $6.4 billion over the next few years. Historic turmoil in the credit markets is already costing the department hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra interest payments each...

There is rising criticism that the Machang Bridge, which opened in July at the cost of millions of won, is only enriching speculative capitalists with tax money. They say that throughout the country, roads built through private investment are becoming white elephants where investors eat tax money via rough traffic predictions and contracts with excessive profit guarantees. The province of South Gyeongsang spent 380 billion won (US$337 million) in budget outlays and 190 million won in private capital to build the Machang Bridge linking Changwon and Masan. For the next 30 years, the earnings from the bridge tolls will be...

Governor Perry and other state leaders have agreed to bring a halt to the practice which some say has led to toll roads...the diversion of money from the state's highway fund to other projects, 1200 WOAI news reports. "Implement a plan that sets a definitive course to end the practice of funding the Department of Public Safety with gas taxes that are needed for road construction, and return to funding the DPS with general revenue," is the first goal in a long term transportation funding plan released by Perry, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, and House Speaker Tom Craddick. 1200 WOAI...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Public investment funds based in Texas could invest directly in transportation projects through a new corporation under a plan unveiled on Thursday by the state's legislative leaders and the governor. Texas has the nation's biggest road privatization plan but the legislature, reacting to criticisms that developers were enriching themselves at the expense of taxpayers, enacted a two-year moratorium. That has crimped road-building projects and led to a series of clashes between the governor and the legislature, who now have agreed on a compromise plan. Developers, including overseas companies, investment banks and private equity funds all vie...

Lately I have heard from some of you, asking about the Corridor. Most folks believe it is over, dead, gone from our beautiful East Texas. I have been watching our government's actions on this subject. Did you know that in TxDOT's cover letter to the federal government it states they will only use existing highways to build their corridor? Did you know that TxDOT also stated that it may need to build in non-existing paths also, some time in the future. Citizens, I write you today to make sure you understand that the corridor issue in Trinity County has not...

During a training exercise, Iraqi army Pfc. Waisam Rashash Mohammed, 22, an explosive ordnance disposal technician, locates a possible improvised explosive devise at Camp Mejid, Iraq, Aug. 5, 2008. Soldiers of Iraqi army Seventh Infantry Division have undertaken months of training and practical application by coalition forces to keep the roads of Iraq safe. Photo by Cpl. Shawn Coolman. CAMP MEJID — Protecting Coalition forces from hazards on the roads in Iraq is an enormous task that is undertaken everyday, but now it has become a little easier. Marines with Route Clearance Platoon, Company A, Third Combat Engineer Battalion and...

Please pardon this "original material" vanity posting, however all the talk this Saturday morning (and previously) of re-imposing a nationwide 55 MPH speed limit has motivied me to take up the keyboard to make an important point that seems to be being missed in this debate. That point is that imposing such a limit inherently places a value on peoples' time. Let's do the math. Since both sides have been claiming that this speed limit will result in fuel savings of 2% from traveling at 70 MPH, then let's do the math using those numbers. We'll also use a vehicle...

Dust storms that fouled Kern County’s air in May could mean months of delay for two major Kern County freeway projects. A project to widen Highway 46 from Holloway Road west to Highway 33 at Blackwells Corner will almost certainly be delayed for five months or more, said Ron Brummett, executive director of the Kern Council of Governments. And the Westside Parkway in Bakersfield, a freeway that’s to run west from a point near Highway 99 to Heath Road, might also be delayed if dickering over air quality standards goes on too long. The Environmental Protection Agency, Brummett said, is...

The Virginia General Assembly yesterday began its latest special session to deal with the state's transportation problems. Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine wants to raise $1 billion per year for transportation through an increase in the motor vehicle sales tax, higher registration fees and a 1-cent sales tax increase for purchases in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads on everything except food and medicine. Mr. Kaine's plan also includes creation of what looks like a huge boondoggle to benefit the politically well-connected. It is called a "Transportation Change Fund," and it would pay for mass transit and rail projects, telecommuting and ride-sharing,...

An Iraqi National Police honor guard salutes the raising of his national flag at a ground breaking ceremony signifying the Airport Road revitalization project July 5 in southern Baghdad. The Iraqi NPs provided security for the ceremony. Photo by Spc. David Hodge. FORWARD OPERATING BASE FALCON — Leaders from Multi-National Division – Baghdad, the Iraqi security forces and the government of Iraq broke new ground July 5 in the median of a major thoroughfare in Baghdad. Prominent Iraqi leaders manned three honorary shovels each to move a small piece of Earth that signaled the start of a large revitalization effort...

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Soaring gas prices at the pump means more drivers are going to have a bumpier ride no matter where they go because economic pressure is forcing states to cut back on repaving projects. Americans drove fewer vehicle miles this year than last year, which means that states have less state and federal gasoline excise tax money to pay for the soaring cost of asphalt to repave roads. Asphalt is made from a combination of rocks and sand mixed with liquid asphalt, made of crude oil, to hold it all together. Soaring oil prices have caused asphalt...

KARMA — Along the road nicknamed Chicago, vehicles lined up for miles, each vehicle getting ready to be searched. But they are not going to be searched by Marines, but by local Iraqi security forces. Marines with Company F, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 1, supported Iraqis with the Karma Iraqi Police and Iraqi Soldiers of 1st Company, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, participated in Operation Gravel Dump. “The Iraqi army had (intelligence) that insurgents were smuggling weapons and explosives by hiding them in the gravel trucks,” said 2nd Lt. Adam Steele, platoon commander, 4th...

Gas prices topping $4 a gallon. Freeways that have become parking lots — if you can get to them through surface-street traffic jams caused by fast growth, urban sprawl, and inadequate road planning. Transportation planning in Texas in general seems to have turned into a careening Mack truck that’s just as liable to plow into a city as help it. New highways are needed to get more and more people to work and get NAFTA traffic from the Rio Grande to the Red River, but the state says it doesn’t have the money to build the roads and bridges and...

PANJSHIR PROVINCE, Afghanistan, June 4, 2008 – More than 1,000 people attended the groundbreaking ceremony May 28 for a new $6 million road in Barak, a village in the Bazarak district of Afghanistan’s Panjshir province. Air Force Lt. Col. Russell T. Kaskel, Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team commander, speaks to a crowd of more than 1,000 at the groundbreaking ceremony for the $6 million Barak-to-Khenj road in Barak, Bazarak district, Panjshir province, Afghanistan, May 28, 2008. The 18-kilometer, two-lane road is scheduled to be complete in March 2009. U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Demetrius Lester  (Click photo for screen-resolution...

Many in the great state of Texas have a lot to say about a proposed network of toll roads and railway lines known as the Trans-Texas Corridor. The Texas Department of Transportation received more than 27,000 public comments during a three-month comment period on a proposed corridor project called the TTC-69, said TxDOT spokesman Mark Cross. Transportation officials had 47 public hearings in February and March and accepted written comments through April 18 on the environmental and social impact of the corridor. Comments ranged from flat-out opposition to the corridor to suggestions about how to lessen its impact, Cross told...

AUSTIN — Saying big changes are needed to restore trust in the Texas Department of Transportation, the Sunset Advisory Commission staff is recommending a revamp of its governing board, project planning, and dealings with lawmakers and the public. The commission's report, to be released today, comes in the wake of controversy over planned public-private partnerships on toll roads, the route of the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor transportation network and questions concerning agency funding figures. The Houston Chronicle obtained a copy of the report. "The Sunset review of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) occurred against a backdrop of distrust and frustration...

WASHINGTON — The Texas Department of Transportation, long viewed as hyperpartisan and arrogant by some members of the state's congressional delegation, has been trying to soften its image by reaching out to lawmakers of both parties in the nation's capital. But while state transportation officials are having some success in easing the personal animus, they still face a stiff challenge in selling their policy agenda to the state's elected officials in Washington. Many Texans on the Potomac cringe at the agency's embrace of toll roads, the controversies surrounding the Trans-Texas Corridor and TxDOT's resistance to many of the highway earmarks...

McALLEN -- State senators on Tuesday ordered transportation officials to assess Texas' highway system and prioritize which regions are most in need of new roads. "We're expecting a full report, not some two-page letter," said state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security. "You can't begin addressing the funding problems until you know when the roads are expected to come on line." The transportation committee, which met Tuesday morning at McAllen City Hall, has been at odds with the Texas Department of Transportation since earlier this year, when the agency announced the halt...

RICHMOND (AP) — Gov. Tim Kaine is expected today to announce a tax package to pay for highway construction and the upkeep and repair of state roads and bridges. Mr. Kaine scheduled a news conference at the state capitol to outline details of the bill that he will ask legislators to consider next month. He has called the General Assembly to Richmond beginning June 23 for the second special session on transportation funding in two years. Mr. Kaine, a Democrat, wants regional funding plans to pay for new projects in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia, the state's most populous, fastest-growing...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry wants to build a big highway through the Lone Star State. No, make that a really big highway, as in a monstrously big highway. The exact route hasn't been determined. The mega-highway would run roughly from Laredo on the Rio Grande River through the Hill Country and the Piney Woods and then through Texarkana in that tiny portion of the state that borders Arkansas. Imagine for a moment if that thoroughfare would be pointed in the other direction - from the Valley, through the South Plains and then through the heart of the Panhandle, right past...

Drivers along Interstate 85 on Monday saw an unusual site along the side of the road. Numerous people were lying face down along I- 85 just after the Highway 9 exit. A News Channel 7 photographer was on the scene as 16 people were taken into custody. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington D.C. tells News Channel 7 that a Spartanburg County Deputy stopped a van on I-85 and called the ICE team to investigate. 14 men and two women were taken into custody. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says all are from Mexico and Quatemala and appear to be in...

Block the road all nite BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published Oct. 15, 2000.) According to a recent newspaper article that I carefully clipped out and then lost but I remember the gist of, traffic gridlock in the United States is very bad. It's getting to the point where many commuters arrive at work, use the bathroom, then immediately begin commuting home. FACT: The average American commuter whose car radio is tuned to a ''Classic Rock'' station spends more time singing along to the Kiss song ''Rock And Roll All Nite'' than talking with his...

CAMP TAJI, Iraq, May 1, 2008 – Craters from roadside bombs can be found throughout the thousands of miles of roadway that cover Baghdad and the surrounding areas. Army Spc. Robert Fancher, from Grenada, Miss., uses a hand trowel to smooth out the edges of the concrete with the adjoining roadway while performing rapid crater repair in northwestern Baghdad. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Henry Bauer, Multinational Division Baghdad  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. When the attacks occur, it’s time for the soldiers of 230th Concrete Team to “pour” into action. The team is based out of Purvis,...

County commissioners reaffirmed their stance against the Trans-Texas Corridor, and they took another step toward keeping county government transparent when they met Tuesday. First up on the court's agenda, commissioners heard a presentation by Connie Fogle on behalf of the newly formed Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission. According to Fogle, the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, requires state agencies to coordinate with local commissions to "ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level." "Critical in the code is the word 'coordinate,'" she said. "This does not mean the commission has to cooperate. The intent is to...

He says he is — seriously devoted to building and maintaining highways. But he is just as devoted to fencing state government into fiscal straits that make these goals impossible without privatizing highways through tolls. Perry last week said that going full-bore with toll roads is the only way for Texas to build new highways. That’s not so. The history of Texas tells us it’s not. Toll roads have their function without question. But so do bonds. So does a gasoline tax that has not kept pace with inflation. So does a reexamination of how Texas funds highways in general...

Texas Farm Bureau offered several viable transportation and funding alternatives to the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) in meeting Texas’ future transportation needs during testimony before the Senate Transportation Committee. “Let me assure you, as an industry we absolutely support and recognize the need for building and maintaining roads in Texas,� said Texas Farm Bureau State Director Tom Paben. “We feel this can be accomplished within the current framework of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).� “However, there is a need for redirection, as well as a review of the current priorities of the agency,� Paben added, noting several concerns about...

AUSTIN — Maybe Texas’ transportation problems are a lot simpler to understand than recent fights over toll roads make it seem, North Texas leaders told state senators Wednesday. “My first recommendation: You need to provide a lot more revenue for transportation,” Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments, told the Texas Senate transportation committee. That was hardly the only suggestion from Mr. Morris or the many others who spoke to the committee, which is seeking input as it readies an approach on toll roads, TxDOT and more for the next legislative session. But it might...

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry promised to keep fighting for private toll roads and his other transportation priorities Tuesday during his first major speech on the subject since the death in December of transportation commission chairman Ric Williamson. "This is a place for big challenges, not big excuses," he told state Transportation Department employees and highway experts from around the country at the annual Transportation Forum. Next year's legislative session, he said, can't be anything like last year's. "The Legislature must understand that 'no' is not a solution," Mr. Perry said. "It is an abdication of responsibility." Before last year's...

Continuing a lifelong practice of helping rural East Texans, Nolan Alders attended a meeting in Austin Tuesday as a member of the citizens' advisory committee for the Trans-Texas Corridor highway project. Alders was among 18 representatives of communities that run along the route of the proposed highway, which runs from Laredo to Texarkana. The committee members prepared for their roles as community representatives, and heard comments from state transportation leaders, including Texas Department of Transportation Executive Director Amadeo Saenz and Commissioner Ted Houghton of the Texas Transportation Commission. TxDOT literature says the TTC-69 committee — and another committee to represent...

For years, Texas has been planning a privately financed super turnpike from Mexico to the Oklahoma border. But like rush-hour traffic, the plan for a Trans-Texas Corridor is only inching along. "It ran into a firestorm of controversy in Texas,� said Neal McCaleb, a former Oklahoma transportation secretary. Critics have a wide range of concerns about the corridor, which has a key stretch that would parallel Interstate 35. (Another stretch would extend from the Texarkana/Shreveport area to Mexico.) Particularly upset are landowners who may be in the corridor's path. The Texas Transportation Department calls many concerns myths. The department says,...

Despite the uproar over the state's proposal to build Trans-Texas Corridor 69 through East Texas, Lufkin's mayor says he supports the highway — as long as it follows the path of the current U.S. Highway 59. The Trans Texas Corridor/I-69 project is a statewide network of transportation routes in Texas that will incorporate existing and new highways, railways and utility right-of-ways. Anyone wishing to comment on the proposed road can go online to www.keeptexasmoving.com. TxDOT has expanded its public comment period for TTC-69 to Friday, April 18. Gov. Rick Perry appointed Gorden, along with 17 other Texans, to an I-69...

Here's a modest suggestion for improving the roads in and around the Hampton Roads area. And it's an idea that I'm sure will appeal to the cracked staff at the local papers who are constantly advocating one tax after another to pay for our road construction program. My brilliant idea: A sales tax on the Virginian Pilot. Ta...daaaaa! Now before you click away from this page let's run the numbers. The Virginian Pilot has a paid daily circulation of about 200,000. Let's say that a sales tax of 50 cents per paper is imposed. That would bring in over $36...

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...

HARRISBURG -- With a section of a Pittsburgh bridge dropping 8 inches and an Interstate 95 support pillar cracking in Philadelphia, Gov. Ed Rendell is turning up the heat under the Legislature to provide infrastructure repair funds more quickly. Mr. Rendell sent a letter to all 253 legislators yesterday urging quick passage of a $240 million "supplemental debt authorization." His program of borrowing would enable state officials to fast-track repairs on some of the state's 6,000 bridges classified as structurally deficient, along with fixing ailing highways, repairing "state-owned, high-hazard dams" and beginning flood mitigation projects. Also yesterday, Mr. Rendell called...

FORT WORTH -- The Trans-Texas Corridor is now so controversial, merely uttering the words in most political circles is taboo. "We're calling it a 'regional loop' because you can't say 'Trans-Texas Corridor' in the state of Texas anymore," said Michael Morris, transportation director for the North Central Texas Council of Governments. "The Trans-Texas Corridor is a lightning rod," he told visiting state representatives this week while explaining how the corridor would connect to regional highways by 2030. Opposition to the proposed construction of a $184 billion network of toll roads during the next 50 years is so strong statewide that...

State Rep. Jim McReynolds has sent a letter to the Texas Department of Transportation saying he thinks TxDOT should drop the idea of tying the Trans-Texas Corridor in with plans for routing Interstate 69 through East Texas. McReynolds says tremendous negative outcry from his constituents and other East Texas residents has made it clear to him no one wants infrastructure that massive and disruptive to the quality of life to be built, taking big swaths out of the Pineywoods countryside. "Within the past several weeks, I have personally attended every TxDOT hearing held in my district regarding this proposed corridor,"...

South Texas is not only going to get its first interstate - it is also going to get a second and a third. State transportation officials knew one of three southern highways - U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77 in Cameron County or U.S. Highway 59 in Webb County - would eventually become part of an interstate stretching from the Texas-Mexico border to Texarkana, in the northeast part of the state. Only Webb County is currently served by an interstate. The state's Trans-Texas Corridor plan calls for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north,...

SH 130 Concession Company LLC finalized the legal details of a financial close with Texas DOT on a $1,360m toll concession to build SH130 segments 5&6 Thursday and Friday last week in bankers' offices in New York City - at Orrick, 666 Fifth Avenue. The actual money flows should occur on Thursday or Friday (Mar 13 or 14) this week, Jose Maria Lopez de Fuentes, president of Cintra North America, told us this morning. Hundreds of documents and over 20 lawyers were involved last week representing TxDOT, private equity people, banks, mostly European, the TIFIA loan group from FHWA, and...

Regional transportation and political leaders are increasingly coming to the conclusion that the only way to keep the chronically congested Washington region moving is tolls, and plenty of them. A report to be released Wednesday pushes a regionwide system that would place tolls on most existing area highways, bridges into the District, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, George Washington Memorial Parkway and such major District thoroughfares as New York Avenue. The key to success, the authors say, is the comprehensiveness of the network....

There's been a lot of talk about the new Trans-Texas Corridor — the next-generation "super-highway" — and opinions are varying. Now the debate is coming to Lufkin's doorstep. On Monday, the American Land Foundation, Stewards of the Range and TURF will hold a workshop at Lufkin's Pitser Garrison Civic Center on how to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor 69. The event runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. A portion of Texas citizens have voiced their opposition to the TTC-69 in public meetings held by the Texas Department of Transportation, but believing they are not being heard, four cities and their...

Officials with the Spanish toll road operator Cintra have announced that the company has secured $430 million in loans from the U.S. government to build and operate two segments of a toll road in central Texas. Cintra officials announced the company’s financial plan for the $1.36 billion Highway 130 segments on Monday, March 10. OOIDA Senior Government Affairs Representative Mike Joyce told Land Line that the Association does raise red flags when federal dollars are used to subsidize private investors. Officials with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association are not, however, categorically opposed to a state using future toll revenue to...

Senior executives of the Texas Department of Transportation can expect some heavy grilling from state legislators when the state Legislature convenes next January, state Rep. Jim McReynolds said Friday. Speaking to the monthly First Friday luncheon of The Chamber, Lufkin-Angelina County, McReynolds said many legislators, especially those from rural East Texas, are unhappy with TxDOT leaders over the Trans- Texas Corridor project and how it has incorporated plans for an Interstate 69 through the region. McReynolds said he attended all four of the TxDOT hearings on the TTC held in his district, which included one in Diboll, and "never heard...

The Nacogdoches County commissioners court voted Tuesday to support numerous community members who have recently turned out in droves opposing the proposed I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor by adopting a resolution against the project. The resolution is expected to be sent to the Texas Department of Transportation and to the governor's office. Precinct 4 Commissioner Tom Strickland said that it's apparent most people in Nacogdoches County approved of the original project — a standard Interstate roadway. But now most are opposed to the large TTC structure. 145th District Court Judge Campbell Cox II submitted a map that showed several oil and gas wells...

AUSTIN - When it comes to road improvement and maintenance, by most accounts, the South Plains and Panhandle are fortunate. Despite a $1.1 billion accounting error, the Texas Department of Transportation recently reported no projects in the region have been canceled or delayed while cities like Dallas, Houston and Laredo had at least a half dozen highway projects delayed. But the $1.1 billion-error, which occurred because TxDOT inadvertently counted some bond money twice and consequently allocated more funding than it had, is just the latest problem plaguing the beleaguered agency. For months, TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz and other transportation...

TEXAS CITY — A massive superhighway that Texans have protested at public hearings statewide drew heated opposition among Galveston County residents, who said they feared the toll road would cripple the local shipping industry and do nothing to improve insufficient hurricane evacuation routes. The Trans-Texas Corridor would wind from Laredo to Corpus Christi, wrap around the western edge of Greater Houston, parallel Interstate 59 through East Texas and leave the state in Texarkana. But residents at a public hearing Thursday night in Texas City questioned the real purpose for the road, which would also be part of a national Interstate...

HOUSTON -- It did not take long Tuesday for the Texas Department of Transportation to find out what the Houstonians at a public hearing thought about the proposed 600-mile Trans-Texas Corridor, KPRC Local 2 reported. "George Washington, Sam Houston would vomit on you people," one attendee said. Chris Zora, who opposes the plan, attended the hearing at the Arabia Shrine Center in Southwest Houston. "I'd like to see a show of hands here of anybody that approves of this corridor," Zora said. "Is there anyone in this room who approves of this corridor? Raise your hands if you approve of...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.� Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

The governor never tires of telling us that he grew up on a farm. Gee, who'da thunk it? Well, me for one. Over the course of these "town meetings" on his multibillion-dollar toll-and- spend scheme, our governor has undergone a personality change. The first few sessions featured docile crowds that were willing to sit back and absorb the wisdom of a Wall Street whiz who spoke with great authority on matters of high finance. But once the crowds wised up, Gov. Jon Corzine started to look like the bumbler he was when he first entered politics eight years ago. The...

Sometimes the truth just has a way of coming to light. A public information officer with the Texas Department of Transportation this week wrote a column in the Herald-Press describing the financial woes facing TxDOT and how because of those problems the state’s transportation department doesn’t have the money to deal with many of the state’s transportation issues. Apparently, several of the state’s senators do not feel that is the case at all. David Dewhurst called out the state’s interim chairwoman of the Texas Transportation Commission, Hope Andrade, on this very issue, according to a story from the Associated Press....

Not one of the 11 East Texans who approached the podium at Wednesday's hearing on Interstate 69 voiced support for the planned highway. "This is highway robbery, and we should not pursue this project," said David Simpson, a Longview resident and fifth-generation Texan. "This process has bypassed the Constitution. It has bypassed the U.S. Congress, and I'm opposed to it because of the unconstitutional way that it has been pushed through." The public hearing, held at Maude Cobb Convention and Activity Center, was a chance for residents to comment and ask questions about Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor. The corridor would extend...