Posted on 08/12/2006 1:03:02 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
IRVING -- State officials say they're ready to do what North Texas leaders have asked for months: convert the Trans-Texas Corridor into a new outer loop toll road around Fort Worth and Dallas.
The planned toll road would include a new east-west road spanning the southern tip of Tarrant and Dallas counties, then connect with new urban outer freeways in the Metroplex, rather than bypassing populated areas and running through rural northeast Texas.
The breakthrough in a months-long argument between state and local leaders came Friday on the final day of the annual transportation summit in Irving.
Phil Russell, director of the Texas Department of Transportation's turnpike division, said during a lunchtime speech that he would ask the Federal Highway Administration to redraw the Trans-Texas study area in the next month or so to include the outer loop. The federal agency is the lead in an ongoing study to build the North Texas-to-San Antonio toll road and must be consulted before the project's scope can be changed.
"I think we're going to work it out," Russell said before the speech.
Russell congratulated the North Central Texas Council of Governments, the official planning body for Dallas-Fort Worth, for coming up with a workable alternative for Trans-Texas.
The announcement came a few minutes after about a dozen local elected leaders, mostly from the eastern Metroplex, held a news conference demanding that the Transportation Department immediately bend to local desires.
"If we find a different route has been chosen than this one, we're going to go to the state Legislature and fight," Dallas Councilman Bill Blaydes said during the news conference at the Westin Dallas Fort Worth Airport, where the summit was held. "This is one final plea."
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, also a summit speaker, said the Trans-Texas project was flawed because it pitted state government against local governments.
"I'm concerned with several aspects of the Trans-Texas Corridor," she said. "No. 1, I'm very concerned about a big toll road going from South Texas and taking farmers' land by eminent domain. To that extent, it seems to me to not be economically viable. I think they should also take into consideration the local issues that have been raised. In the early stages, it doesn't appear they gave consideration to the local impact."
Some other Metroplex leaders were more cautious, saying they believed they were close to smoothing things over with the Transportation Department and didn't want to be too critical.
Tarrant County Commissioner Glen Whitley noted that dozens of Metroplex leaders attended public hearings this summer and offered to throw their political support behind Trans-Texas as long as it was moved closer to the Metroplex.
"The last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of comments from leaders in this area endorsing this plan," Whitley said. "Recent conversations lead me to believe that TxDOT is going to listen to those comments."
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
Using this new route it becomes, in the end, simply another slow, crowded and nasty urban freeway.
Follow the money on this "project".
Fine build toll roads. And while you're at it, end all taxation related to fuel. Like that will ever happen.
We're a bunch of suckers.
free?
The tax payers get to pay for that new road twice. Taxes & Tolls!
The North Texas Tollway Authority board of directors voted unanimously to approve an agreement with the Texas Department of Transportation. The deal specifies which agency will build and operate several planned toll roads. It also specifies that the tollway authority will get contracts to collect tolls on every planned toll road.
I wish they would stick this idea up their.
Diddle what is your take on this. I know you've mentioned it before about using the TTC as an outer loop in the Metroplex. How far out is this going to be in miles from say the existing 635 on the east and 820 on the west today, if you care to hazard a guess? I guess one major change is the west side of Fort Worth being brought into the scheme.
Kind'a takes away from the whole point of the corridor, doesn't it?
There... better. I concur, BTW.
Go ahead and vote for him, but he will likely finish in fourth place.
Yup. But this thing's gonna' cost like another "Big Dig" so all the polls in urban areas in Texas want to get in on the looting of the treasury.
It won't be a freeway; it will be a tollway.
There will be much less local traffic that far out, except for those who live near the tollway. The new route will benefit businesses which will be located near or on the tollway.
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