Pro TTC Ping!
This is a pro Trans-Texas Corridor ping list.
Please let me know by Freepmail if you want on or off the list.
Posted on 11/12/2006 3:14:29 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
As the controversy escalates regarding the Trans-Texas Corridor, I find alarming an Express-News article dated March 12, 2005. It is titled "State gets in fast lane to new toll road system" and subtitled "Go-ahead given for planning Trans-Texas Corridor segment."
It is the announcement of the signing of the first contract for this project, and it extols the "cutting-edge, bold and forward-looking" aspects of Rick Perry's plan.
Yet today, amid the discussions about farmland, foreign involvement and NAFTA, I hear little about the subject of one small paragraph near the end of this article. The paragraph reads, "Traffic levels on I-35 will help determine toll rates and limits on building competing public roads. A certain amount of congestion is needed to create a market for toll roads."
To ensure profitability, the contract can limit expansion of existing roads and/or the building of new roads well beyond the dimensions of the corridor. This would be most critical for I-35, but could also limit local efforts to improve road infrastructure and development extending for several miles either side of the corridor.
Potentially, this would create a recipe for disaster if too few drivers choose to avoid the tolls and continue to drive existing roads. Nearby municipalities could have their hands tied by this contract.
Also, considering the rising cost of transportation, the influx of and relocation of population, economic growth or downturn and environmental impacts, it is very difficult to predict transportation needs very far into the future.
Yet this contract will allow a private, for-profit venture, comprised in part by a foreign company, control over the road infrastructure for the next 50 years.
The citizens of Texas could, in their efforts to address local and regional transportation issues, be severely limited by a veto power provided by this long-term contract. The effect on Texas and its citizens could be potentially devastating.
As I approach 60, I realize that this control will continue until my 110th birthday. My 20-year-old granddaughter will be 70 years old at that time. It is difficult to understand how our government entities can value the concept of electing public officials for two six-year terms, yet hand over this kind of authority over the citizens of Texas for 50 years.
The legacy passed on by this very unwise decision is undeserved by future generations.
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
We need the road, but not at this price. This thing stinks from so many angles it's pitiful.
Pro TTC Ping!
This is a pro Trans-Texas Corridor ping list.
Please let me know by Freepmail if you want on or off the list.
Price? As if free highways were a bargain. The toll roads that have been built in Texas have been built under budget and ahead of schedule. That hasn't happened with state, US, and Interstate highways.
"Price? As if free highways were a bargain. The toll roads that have been built in Texas have been built under budget and ahead of schedule. That hasn't happened with state, US, and Interstate highways"
The answer to poor contruction isn't turning control of our economy and transporation systems to foreign entities.
I keep hearing how "corrupt" and other wild adjectives hurled at the TTC, but don't hear any substance behind it? Where are the indictments of people involved in corrupt activities regarding the TTC?
When I'm sitting in traffic, I think of the anti-TTC, black-helicopter crowd.
This is what Perry been seeking. Can you imagine the under table bonus he will receive. Maybe that is why he stated he may not finish his term.
This will make the lottery winners, Ben Barnes and friends, look like pikers...
It should be named the George Bush Memorial Mexican Invasion Highway.
This is a once in a lifetime deal that politicians say "Now this is why I got into politics". Before it's all said and done it will be a AG Morales deal.
Psst! Every person in the legislature has some "organization" that if you donate a few bucks to it gets their "attention".....
It is constitutional if it is on private property.
Back in the early '90s, a consortium proposed a private highway parallel to I-35 but about 50 miles west to be built on donated land. It would have run from the Mexican border to the Oklahoma border. Ann Richards and her cronies killed it, because commercial interests especially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area didn't want anyone to be able to bypass them. Talk about corruption.
The TTC corridor right of way will be owned by the state of Texas. The eminent domain power as strictly interpreted requires property to only be taken for "public use". Considering there is a 170 year history of using eminent domain for taking land on which privately owned and operated railroads have been built, there's no way the Texas Supreme Court would rule that a toll road can't be built on state owned land or that the state has no right to acquire land for private toll roads.
Multi Nationals are snapping up toll roads as soon as
cities can sell them.
The Trans-Texas corridor sounds too good to be true
the positors are just so positive about it.
Nothing could ever go wrong it will increase trade.
Like we have to have more crappy electronic and crappy auto parts made in Mexico.
NAFTA works so well that mexicans are fleeing mexico in greater numbers.NAFTA has improved central America so much
they are turning communist.
The sales job is superb its just all the other trade agreements these same folks have hammered out
have only benefited a few wealthy Trans Nationals
GM and Ford cant even make a buck on NAFTA and all their
shoddy poorly engineered junk is made in mexico.
You can dress tarbaby up but you cant get the rabbit to kiss him.
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