Posted on 02/05/2005 6:34:20 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The time to speak out and ask questions about the Trans Texas Corridor is near.
Residents in Caldwell and Guadalupe counties will get a better understanding of potential impacts to their land usage and future tax revenues next month during Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) public meetings concerning the proposed corridor.
The corridor, as envisioned, would consist of a network of brand-new "transportation routes" that would carry passenger vehicles and large trucks in separate lanes and also provide for railway freight, high-speed commuter rail and "infrastructure" for utilities including water, oil, gas, electricity, broadband and "other telecommunications services," TxDOT says.
The routes would bypass major metropolitan areas and the project would be implemented in phases, beginning with "priority routes," which include a route to run east but largely parallel to Interstate 35.
The roadways would be toll roads, and would require 146 acres of right-of-way for each mile of the envisioned 4,000 miles of corridor. The combined vehicle, rail and utility lines would be 1,200 feet wide.
Overall, the project would result in the taking of 558,000 acres of private lands, according to Corridor Watch, an organization whose premise is "challenging the wisdom of the Trans Texas Corridor."
While landowners would be compensated under eminent domain, acreage taken for the corridor would be removed from county and school district tax rolls.
Officials with TxDOT will meet with Caldwell County residents on March 3 at the Lockhart High School Cafetorium, 1 Lion Country Drive. On March 22, citizens of Guadalupe County can attend a public meeting at the Seguin-Guadalupe County Coliseum, 810 S. Guadalupe St. Both sessions will run from 5 to 8 p.m. and will be held in an "open house" format.
Those in attendance will be able to ask questions as well as provide input and submit comments for the record. Available at the meetings will be the preliminary results of an environmental study that is expected to have narrowed the proposed route to a more or less 10-mile swath.
The round of public meetings is the second concerning the corridor. In the fall of last year, citizens were presented with maps showing a wide area of Texas from the Rio Grande to the Red River. Since then, "corridor alternatives" for the portion of the project to parallel IH-35 have been "refined."
This summer, project planners intend to have completed a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and following that will be another round of public meetings. The complete EIS, consideration of which will also include a "no build" option, is expected in early 2006. Around the same time, project planners are expected to present the corridor plan to the Federal Highway Administration.
In December, Gov. Rick Perry detailed how the project would be funded. Under a type of contract called a "comprehensive development agreement," which allows the state to hire a private firm to "plan, design, construct, finance, maintain and operate" the corridor, the governor said a Spanish firm has been selected to develop the corridor project.
Cintra-Zachary has said it plans to invest $6 billion by 2010 in the stretch of toll road from San Antonio to Dallas. Under terms of the agreement, the company would also pay the state $1.2 billion to be able to operate the toll road for 50 years. The $1.2 billion could be used by TxDOT for road improvements, high-speed or commuter rail projects.
According to TxDOT, the total project cost could range from $145.2 to $183.5 billion.
Proponents say the network of roads and rail and pipelines would ease traffic congestion in major cities and that given projected growth rates, the corridor is a proactive way of managing the transportation needs of 50 years into the future.
Opponents argue that the corridor would not ease major metropolitan traffic, but could bisect towns and farms. It would also drain communities along IH-35 through lessened traffic and relocation of businesses.
For more information, visit
www.txdot.state.tx.us;
www.keeptexasmoving.com;
and www.corridorwatch.org
But not Refugio.
"Sounds like a democrat idea to me...... "
Meek, this will interest you!
I'll go to the one in Seguin. Yall help me with some good questions.
Are you having an easy time finding people who want to pay an additional tax of 20 cents per gallon(or more)
Are you having an easy time finding people who want to pay an additional tax of 20 cents per gallon(or more)
These plans are looking out 50 plus years. Do you honestly think mpg will be the same in 10, 25, 50 years.
Every car on the road in Texas today will be replaced by the time TTC 35 is completed.
colorado's got a new toll road in the works too.
parallel to i-25 and just east, from poo-ayblow, denver, ft collins, into wyoming.
"I have no idea whether you are a democrat, republican, libertarian , green, or whatever. I don't care."
That's better. Take a look at my other postings (on anything else other than toll roads), and you'll see that I'm a solid conservative.
" Are you having an easy time finding people who want to pay an additional tax of 20 cents per gallon(or more)"
Very easy. In fact, the price of gas went up by 50 cents per gallon just before the election, and still Bush got 60,000,000 votes - and won. What these people understood was that 20 cents per gallon for gas is something like 1 cent per mile - so yes, most people would be very happy to pay an extra penny per mile than the 20 cents that is being shoved down our throats by Perry.
That would be the Camino Real Corridor, which is High Priority Corridor #27 that will eventually reach El Paso.
" Every car on the road in Texas today will be replaced by the time TTC 35 is completed."
Yes, but there is plenty of time to deal with that problem.
As I mentioned to you on an earlier post, it would only take a year (at the most) to put up toll booths on existing freeways, if gas mileage improved so much that the gas tax was insufficient. There is no problem adding tolling. Also, by the time cars are replaced, whether we like it or not, all cars will have a tracking system, so per mile tolling could also be imposed - and virtually overnight.
You're trying to solve a problem that is nowhere near existing yet.
The Western Railroads were mostly government sponsored. There's an old book by Gabriel Kolko entitled "The Triumph of Conservatism" that discussed this era. "Conservatism" in left-leaning-historical terminology generally means government sponsorship of private enterprise.
Your agenda is to try to paint Perry and and Cintra as an underhanded deal.
Who pays you to shovel this shit around.
I'll vote no on the gas tax.... Heck I don't won't to pay more for all my mileage around Texas most of which will never be on these tollways.... Let the toll uses pay when they cruising at 85mph.
The link works fine for me.
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