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New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, is proposing a variation of the "public-private partnerships," being implemented in other parts of the country and according to critics a danger to the sovereignty of the U.S., as a solution for the state's expected $3 billion budget deficit, the biggest after California and New York. Under the typical PPP structure that has been supported by the Bush administration, through the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration, projects such as the Trans-Texas Corridor highway, are under way. That new highway project is planned to be four football fields wide and run through...

More than 800 people packed a meeting hall in Hempstead for a public meeting on the Trans-Texas Corridor. Seven more public sessions are scheduled. Residents are speaking out about a controversial highway that would cut right through the state. The state plans to build a 4,000-mile network of super-highway toll roads. In Hempstead on Tuesday, many residents said that road could cost them their property. Odis Styers owns hundreds of acres north, east and west of town. But the traffic that now travels through on State Highway 290 could interrupt his peace. A TxDOT super highway could soon plow through...

If it were built, the road would be one of the engineering wonders of the 21st century -a trade route a quarter of a mile wide, carving a path from Mexico through the heart of America to Canada. In its most radical form, it would allow lorry drivers to travel hundreds of miles from the Mexican border deep into the US before reaching customs and immigration controls in Kansas. Backers of the idea, labelled the "Nafta Superhighway", after the North American trade pact, say it would revolutionise patterns of commerce across the continent and enhance the economic prospects of millions....

With a major interstate running right through our area traffic is a common topic for Central Texans. How do we solve the problem of more traffic on i-35? Is the Trans Texas Corridor a realistic solution and do we even need it? In part two of our Trans Texas Corridor series we look at the project from a needs angle. There are basically two sides to the Trans Texas Corridor project, those for it and those against. One thing both sides gree on is that something needs to be done. There are twenty one million Texas residents. 45 percent of...

News Release Contact: Randall Dillard Telephone: (512) 463-8588 Interstate 69 from Texas to Michigan is included on a short list of interstate corridors being considered for fast track development by federal transportation officials, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary. E. Peters has announced. If I-69 is selected by the U.S. Department of Transportation this summer as part of the Corridors of the Future program, the federal department will aggressively support the project to move it “from the drawing board to completion faster than ever before,” according to the announcement. The Texas segment of I-69 is being developed as part of the...

February 8, 2007 NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING - TEXAS SENATE Transportation & Homeland Security Committee Senator John Carona, Chairman Public Hearing on State Policy For: Toll Roads; Public Private Partnerships; and, The Trans Texas Corridor 8:30 AM – Thursday, March 1, 2007 Capitol Extension Auditorium URGENT NOTICE to CorridorWatch.org Members and Others Challenging the Wisdom of the TTC: We have expended years of effort challenging the TTC and the hard work is starting to payoff. We are getting the attention of those who can make a real change in the direction of the TTC. Now is not the time to...

The proposed I-69 project could be considered for "fast-track" development by the federal officials, stated Texas Department of Transportation officials this week. Dubbed the "Nafta highway," I-69 has been proposed as a transportation corridor running from the Texas border through Michigan and into Canada. The highway could eventually replace parts of U.S. 59 running through Texas. This summer, the U.S. Department of Transportation will be looking at a group of proposed, large-scale interstate highways for consideration as part of the Corridors of the Future program. Should I-69 be chosen as one of the Corridors, it would then receive "aggressive" support...

A San Antonio-area lawmaker has filed a bill to kill the Trans-Texas Corridor. State Rep. David Leibowitz, D-Helotes, told Waco-based KWTX that the massive toll road project would “destroy rural Texas as we know it.” State Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, whose district includes Ellis and Hill counties, both of which would be impacted by the proposed toll road, said he would be supportive of the measure. “I support efforts to get more control over TxDOT (Texas Department of Transportation) and the Trans-Texas Corridor,” Pitts said. “The Trans-Texas Corridor will have enormous effects on this area and the people who live...

Macquarie to buy newspaper chain; critics fear it's to silence Trans-Texas Corridor opponents. One of the foreign firms leasing the Indiana Toll Road is drawing suspicion from some Texans after announcing plans to acquire a chain of small newspapers there. Australia-based Macquarie Media Group last week said it will pay $80 million for American Consolidated Media, which publishes 40 community newspapers and shopping publications serving nine communities in Texas and Oklahoma. Macquarie's sister company, Macquarie Infrastructure Group, last year joined with the Spanish conglomerate Cintra to lease the Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels...

ne hundred and seventy-one years after the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence, opponents of the Trans-Texas Corridor plan to send a message to lawmakers: Don’t Tag Texas. A massive rally is planned for March 2 in Austin, with organizers hoping to see at least 100,000 - if not a half-million people - march up Congress Avenue beginning at 2 p.m. to the Capitol steps to stage a several-hour rally that will oppose not only Gov. Rick Perry’s signature project but also a federal animal identification program. “Don’t Tag Texas covers both issues: toll tags and animal tags,” said...

Gov. Rick Perry appointed best bud Ric Williamson of Weatherford to the Texas Transportation Commission in 2001. Williamson became a field general to carry out Perry's plan -- to forever change the way Texas pays for roads. During Williamson's six-year term, which ends Thursday, the state embraced toll roads, privatization and pretty much anything that's not a tax increase. Williamson became commission chairman in 2004. The strategy is working, despite criticism of Williamson's appetite for toll roads and frequent stumping for a highway system that responds to market forces rather than politics. Funding has been freed up for many long-delayed...

(January 26, 2007)--A legislator from San Antonio has filed a bill to kill GOP Gov. Rick Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor toll road proposal. Democratic Representative David Liebowitz says his measure would take away the Texas Department of Transportation's authority to buy land and do contracts for the project. Click Here For More Information Liebowitz told WOAI radio that the Trans-Texas Corridor would "destroy rural Texas as we know it." Perry's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Joe Krier with Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation believes the Liebowitz bill, which was filed Thursday, is a mistake. Krier says the...

CorridorWatch.org JANUARY, 2007 MEMBER NEWSLETTER Happy New Year From CorridorWatch.org 2007 promises to be a great year for CorridorWatch.org, its members, and its efforts to question the wisdom of the Trans Texas Corridor. We have been very, very busy during the last two months despite the holidays. CorridorWatch.org has seen tremendous growth in both December and January. We have jumped from members in 186 counties to members in 199 counties! We had such a surge in new members in December that our newsletter software crashed. Sadly we lost two weeks of newsletter subscriber information. That followed the failure of our...

Plan for superhighway ripped as 'urban legend' Congressman, DOT undersecretary disagree over threat to sovereignty By Jerome R. Corsi January 26, 2007, WorldNetDaily.com Jeffrey N. Shane, undersecretary for DOT Jeffrey N. Shane, undersecretary for DOT Congressmen and a policy official of the Department of Transportation engaged in a spirited exchange over whether NAFTA Super Highways were a threat to U.S. sovereignty or an imaginary "Internet conspiracy," such as the "black helicopter myths," advanced by fringe lunatics. At a meeting Wednesday of the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Jeffrey N....

Depending on the traffic, it could take quite a while for Parker County residents to make it to one of three transportation meetings slated to take place in local cities next week. Topics up for discussion at the meetings range from Parker County’s long-term transportation needs to finding solutions to the area’s short-term, immediate transportation problems. A discussion of the future roles of passenger rail, bypass routes and safety improvements is also expected. County officials have been asking for public meetings related to the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor for some time. The Corridor, an $8 billion multi-modal transportation plan developed by...

Critics charge that the Macquarie purchase of American Consolidated Media is designed to silence critics of a Texas toll road project. Australian toll road giant Macquarie agreed Wednesday to purchase forty local newspapers, primarily in Texas and Oklahoma, for $80 million. Macquarie Bank is Australia's largest capital raising firm and has invested billions in purchasing roads in the US, Canada and UK. Most recently the company joined with Cintra Concesiones of Spain in a controversial 75-year lease of the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road. Sal Costello, the leading opponent of toll road projects as head of the Texas Toll Party, says...

AUSTIN - A legislator from San Antonio has filed a bill to kill G-O-P Gov. Rick Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor toll road proposal.Perry spokesman Robert Black today said the governor will fight the anti-corridor measure.Democratic Representative David Liebowitz says his bill would take away the Texas Department of Transportation's authority to buy land and do contracts for the project.Liebowitz told W-O-A-I radio that the Trans-Texas Corridor would "destroy rural Texas as we know it."But Black says we face a serious issue in transportation infrastructure in Texas.Black says you have to "think outside the box and come up with solutions," which the...

Executives of large corporations, their bankers and their allies in Congress and the White House have worked together to export our manufacturing industries and their high paying jobs to China, India and Mexico. Now they need your tax money to get the goods from their foreign factories back to your hometown where income from jobs that now pay lower wages can buy their imported products. You see, there are not enough ports and highways to handle the flood of imports from their foreign factories. In the process, they want to hasten formation of the North American Union (NAU) through construction...

A coalition to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor voiced its concerns Sunday in Austin, citing border security and gun rights as key issues not being addressed. The large crowd in attendance at the meeting represented a cross section of Texans and included a veterans group out of Houston. “We didn’t fight a war so our government could give away our land,” said ret. Col. Sam Horton of Houston. World War II veteran, ret. Col. Arthur Peterson of Houston, said national security is at stake because the Gov. Rick Perry-supported transportation project would help erase borders between the United States and Mexico...

Four thousand miles of smooth blacktop. Six open lanes of road with never a traffic jam. Four lanes for trucks to keep the 18-wheelers from bothering Joe Motorist. High-speed rail to get you from San Antonio to Dallas in just a couple of comfy hours. Oil, gas, and water lines running from Oklahoma to the Mexican border. Handy motels, shops, and gas stations to keep you from having to get off the road until you hit the state line. That’s the dream of the backers of the Trans-Texas Corridor, the biggest public works project in the history of the state...