Corridor May Be Perry's Albatross

One out of every eight votes in Rick Perry's margin of victory in the 2002 race for governor came from the rural counties along the Interstate 35 path of Perry's proposed Trans-Texas Corridor. Now, as he seeks re-election, Perry's long-range transportation vision is turning into a political liability for the Republican chief executive.

More than 14,000 Texans — almost all opposed to the Trans-Texas Corridor — turned out at public hearings held by the Texas Department of Transportation this summer to express their displeasure with the highway and the governor.

"I'd like to admit that I made one big mistake in my life. I voted for Rick Perry," Rogers-area farmer Leonard Cobb testified at one hearing.

All four of Perry's re-election challengers oppose the corridor. Democrat Chris Bell, independent Kinky Friedman and Libertarian James Werner all have spoken out against it. Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, running as an independent, attended many of the hearings and called the project the "Trans-Texas Catastrophe" while promising to stop Perry's "land-grabbing highway henchmen."

One of Perry's fellow Republicans on the statewide ballot — U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison — also has criticized the project, saying it imposes too heavily on rural landowners.

The Republican Party of Texas in June passed a plank in its platform calling for the repeal of legislation authorizing the Trans-Texas Corridor.

The Texas Farm Bureau — a longtime Perry political supporter — wants the state to scrap the project.

A dozen alternative routes for Trans-Texas Corridor 35 are under consideration. The toll road corridor would run parallel to Interstate 35 through rural areas from Laredo to Oklahoma, bypassing city congestion to become the new trade highway.

Many of those at the hearings referred to the top alternative on the color map of the Trans-Texas Corridor as the "blue line," a pathway of eminent domain that would take homes and farms and churches for a toll road that likely would be built by a consortium headed by a Spanish company.

Farmers claim the 600-mile-long swath will cause the condemnation of about 136 square miles of land, could divide farms and could force rural school buses to go miles out of the way to get from one side of the corridor to the other. Many local officials fear it will remove land from their local property tax base.

"This lipstick has already been put on this pig. Now the only way to stop this boondoggle is to send Rick Perry home in November," Mark Wilson testified at a Waco hearing.

Texas Transportation Chairman Ric Williamson said the corridor concept is the only feasible means of easing congestion on state highways while guaranteeing future expansion when needed.

"For every 14,000 people who congregate and protest, there are 1.4 million in downtown Dallas and Fort Worth that recognize congestion on 35 is a problem and somebody's got to do something about it," Williamson said.

Officials of the Dallas-Fort Worth area have been generally neutral on the corridor concept, but they questioned the specific plan because its route bypassed the cities and would have done little to relieve local congestion.

Perry last Friday ordered the corridor study to include an alternative route proposed by local officials.

Dallas County Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, a Republican, said he believes people in the Metroplex largely would oppose the plan because it relies heavily on tolls and has included little public input in the planning.

"I dare say, if you took a vote in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, it would be voted down," he said.

The Trans-Texas Corridor actually is a series of new transportation corridors proposed across Texas that would be financed and built by private contractors and likely paid for with tolls.

The corridors probably would be about 1,200 feet wide to accommodate separate lanes for truck traffic, passenger traffic, freight rail, commuter rail and utilities.

TTC35 would run parallel to Interstate 35. The state has contracted with a consortium led by Zachry Construction Corp. of San Antonio and Cintra of Spain to develop a master plan for the corridor. That plan is what has been the subject of public hearings and public angst this summer.

TTC69, which would run from Mexico to past Houston, is in the preliminary planning stage.

"Fourteen thousand people is a nice turnout, but the fact of the matter is we're looking for input, any better ideas," Perry said of the hearings.

Perry said the population growth in the state and traffic congestion demand additional highways and that toll roads are a good way to pay for them. He said most of his political opponents have offered no alternatives, chiding Strayhorn for supporting expensive double-decking of Interstate 35 without explaining how to pay for it.

"As the chief executive officer of the state, as a person who has laid out a vision, I think it makes sense for most communities," Perry said. "I think it makes sense to build toll roads."

Strayhorn on Monday outlined a plan to scrap the project and improve I-35 in the existing right of way with additional lanes and double-decking in places. Perry has contended that double-decking would be prohibitively expensive, but Strayhorn said it would be more appealing to affected Texans.

"This agency is not listening to the people," Strayhorn said of the transportation hearings.

Greg Gerig, a corn farmer and a director of the Blackland Coalition opposed to the corridor, said there is a feeling that state officials have been arrogant in their reaction to the turnout at the meetings.

"Perry has in effect said, 'We don't care what people at the hearings said; we're going to build it anyway,'" Gerig said.

"If it is just a single-issue person who doesn't want toll roads, I'll do everything I can to explain to him why it is good, thoughtful public policy for the entire state of Texas."

One of my employees went to one of these meetings, near Waco. This was after a ten-hour day, and a two-hour commute. She is a hard-working, conservative, rural Texan, with a new-born daughter. I can't say that I really appreciate you placing her legitimate concerns about the TTC, on the same moral footing with illegal aliens.

LOL, such drama!

Some here, and in the article, were making the claim that Perry wasn't "listening to the people" because X number of people showed up at a meeting and most were against the TTC. Implying that if a lot of people are against something, then we ought to not do it. In response to that argument I gave an example of where 20-30 times as many people showed up for another issue, but what they were chanting for was something most of us agree shouldn't be granted. It was a quick and simply way to illustrate that just because a good size crowd is against something, that doesn't mean that they are correct or representative of the majority view.

The dog-and-pony show that she got at the meeting was basically a shiny video showing the bountiful blessings of the TTC, and a backhanded warning that if she doesn't like it, too damn bad. She has never written her representative before, but she is now. The opposition to the TTC isn't from some phantom liberal plot to overthrow Perry - it is growing from the ground up, and will be settled in the Legislature, where it should have been settled all along. Maybe it will get built, and maybe it won't. But if you think that it is just flaming liberals from Austin that are against the TTC, you need to get out of the city limits more often.

I've been to a couple of meetings, and every representative I talked to was straight-forward, full of facts, and tried to answer every question I have. But because the actual facts don't fit with many of the lies and gross exaggerations being tossed about, nor is it what you want to hear, all of a sudden it is a 'dog and pony show.'

Unfortunately there are some people who will lose their land, and I can certainly understand their opposition. The flip side is that if we don't do the TTC (which reduces the total amount of land taken for roads, truck lanes, rail lines, and various utilities because in a single corridor the buffers for each can overlap and use less land total) and instead build each component individually it will take more land in all the various corridors (separate ones for rail, road, and each kind of utilities) and affect far more owners because the ROW through the urban areas isn't nearly wide enough. So sooner or later someone is going to lose land, either a relative few in rural areas or many more in urban areas. There are others who have looked into this and are opposed for a variety of reasons. I disagree with them, but can understand if they've actually researched the facts. Then there are those who hear the most ridiculous lies and get all up in arms and storm to the keyboard and meetings to save Texas, when in reality they know almost nothing about the facts, and don't care to. So yes, I realize that there are a fair number of vocal critics who are extremely ignorant yet they holler the loudest. I remember their angst and fervor towards the coming Y2K collapse, of how the interstate would divide Texas and destroy rural farmers, read predictions of how the horseless carriage would run over our children and leave the poor blacksmiths penniless and destitute, and how the South would be destroyed by evil Abe Lincoln and never recover. Yet somehow we survived. Sometimes good people get worked up and crusade for the wrong causes. William Jennings Bryan was devout, did great work in several areas, and yet was wrong on economics.

Bottom line, Perry is proposing a conservative approach to building roads, where only the users pay instead of forcing everyone to pay regardless of desire. Privatizing a gov't service, just like Reagan advocated. But it cuts middle class welfare, which burns some people. And like any road project, it takes some land from some owners. But every 10 years the area from San Antonio-Dallas adds 2.5 million new residents, the equivalent of another San Antonio, so like it or not we are going to need more roads. Perry is choosing to build them where it costs the least and affects the fewest. That is the kind of decision-making most conservatives say we want our elected officials to engage in (unless it gores our particular ox.) Dig deeper, the truth is a lot different than how Strayhorn and CorridorWatch spin it.

This statement is in the actual article: TTC69, which would run from Mexico to past Houston, is in the preliminary planning stage.

Different road than TTC-35, but fair enough. Were you aware that TTC-69 is simply the replacement for the long-planned I-69, which was to be the upgrade of the existing US59 which already runs from Laredo-Houston-Texarkana? Various local and state officials have been lobbying for literally decades to get portions of this road upgraded to an interstate. TXDOT is studying shifting this upgrade from a multi-decade piecemeal approach (first bypasses around certain small towns, then more bypasses, then overpasses on cross roads in rural areas, etc.) to a TTC project so that they can get most of it privately-financed instead of using taxes and federal funding. Especially since the days of the traditional 80-90% federal funding of roads is ending. Without private funding the upgrades won't happen for at least a decade, but most who drive from Houston to Lufkin, Shreveport, or Arkansas think that an upgrade would be a vast improvement. BTW, TXDOT has also said that for much of the way going southwest from Houston the TTC will probably be able to follow the existing road, just like the eventual San Antonio -Laredo portion of TTC-35 will.

Another factor is that for years the Brownsville and McAllen areas have been lobbying to upgrade one of the roads to a freeway standard to connect with Corpus and San Antonio. TTC-69 may incorporate that, and not build to Laredo until after 2025.

have no problem with the portions that actually address the congested highway system. I have been to West Texas and don't see a congestion problem there. Would be even less congested without illegal border traffic.

Neither TTC-35 nor TTC-69 involve W. TX and those are the only Trans-Texas Corridor projects being looked at. The proposals for TTC projects out there are just 50-year concepts, with no guarantee of being built because demand may not be there even 50 years from now. But Speaker of the House Tom Craddick is from W. TX, which may explanin why those lines are on the concept map. BTW, there was an article here yesterday where Strayhorn said that instead of the TTC she would push to speed up and upgrade the Ports to Plains Hwy, which runs from Laredo-Del Rio-San Angelo-Midland-Amarillo-Colorado.

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