Friday, April 04, 2008
By David Doerr
Tribune-Herald staff writer
Hillsboro, Lorena and Waco will be represented by a mayor, a university professor and a schoolteacher, respectively, for citizen input on the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor proposed to run parallel to Interstate 35.
Last week, the Texas Department of Transportation selected 18 people living along the I-35 corridor to serve on a citizens advisory committee formed to provide recommendations to the state about the future of the corridor. The committee’s membership is supposed to represent a cross section of citizens living along the corridor, department spokeswoman Gabby Garcia said.
“They will be looking at not only the corridor project but looking at the overall corridor of (Interstate) 35, its (traffic) movement, its uses by motorists themselves and the impact it has up and down the corridor in Texas,” she said.
The citizens committee’s work will analyze the 10-mile-wide study area identified two years ago by the transportation department as the preferred route of the Trans-Texas Corridor. If built, the proposed highway corridor would include a network of toll roads, rail lines and utility lines stretching from Laredo to the Oklahoma border.
Hillsboro Mayor John Erwin, a retired medical doctor, said he applied to be a member of the committee to represent the interests of his city and Hill County.
Specifically, he said he wants to ensure that the new highway would not direct traffic and commerce away from Hillsboro, home to the east-west split of I-35. Erwin said he also wants to see farmland in eastern Hill County protected.
“There is a lot of divided opinion about the Trans-Texas Corridor, and I think if we have to have it then we should try to make it (as) useful and friendly to us as possible,” he said.
Erwin said he also wants to advocate for upgrading the existing I-35 highway.
Don Greene, a Lorena resident and Baylor University professor, wants to use his expertise with geographic information systems to map public sentiment on the corridor and inform the committee’s recommendations. He said it will be an ambitious project, and he does not know if he will be able to complete it before the committee’s work is supposed to conclude in December 2009.
“I don’t want to be presumptuous, but at this early stage, it is kind of fun to daydream what the possibilities might be,” he said.
Greene said the visual representation could be useful in helping policymakers better understand the views of citizens about the corridor.
“For me personally, this is more of an academic exercise in which I want to accurately represent the voices in the community,” he said. “I want to step out and not interject my own personal attitudes and opinions but rather give voice to all those people not on the committee and say this is how people are feeling.”
Karen Marstaller, a Waco area schoolteacher and owner of farmland in the corridor study area, said she looks at the proposed highway from several viewpoints. Her primary concerns are about improving safety along the I-35 corridor and protecting family farms, she said.
Marstaller said she looks forward to corresponding with the public to incorporate their input into the committee’s recommendations.
Although the corridor tends to garner strong reactions either for or against it, final solutions aren’t always so clear, she said.
“As a schoolteacher I see a lot of gray areas,” she said. “I think we are just going to have to look at the data. I don’t know what it is going to say. I don’t know what the impact is going to be. We are going to have to examine those things pretty carefully, and I hope we will be given the opportunity to do so.”
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
10 mile wide?? That will swallow up several small towns along I-35. WTF??
“The state estimates it needs at least $23 billion in additional funding the next 11 years to maintain U.S. and state highways and roads as it copes with a burgeoning population.”
If we can’t afford for people to move here, so be it.
Less than .001 favorable is divided?