Posted on 01/07/2009 5:30:13 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The Texas Department of Transportation made an announcement Tuesday that sounded like bad news for South Texas, but isn’t — its multibillion-dollar state infrastructure plan known as the Trans-Texas Corridor is dead.
The key part of the plan for South Texas, known as I-69, is not.
The state’s $180 billion plan, announced seven years ago, called for thousands of miles of 1,200-foot-wide traffic facilities to include toll roads for vehicles, rail for passengers and freight, and technology and power infrastructure such as fiber optic lines.
Tuesday’s announcement by Texas Department of Transportation executive director Amadeo Saenz was a reaction to the massive outcry from landowners in its path, irked both by the idea of toll roads and by the prospect of a huge loss of acreage through condemnation.
But key individual pieces of the corridor project, including the proposed Interstate 69 international trade corridor through South Texas, will move forward, he said.
“When we first rolled out the (Trans-Texas Corridor) concept back in 2002, people thought ‘this is a done deal,’ ” Saenz said. “They never realized that it is a concept, a project in development. The legislation passed as (Trans-Texas) was a tool that allows me to build highways, railroads for passenger and freight, utility corridors. If you piece them together you would have a 1,200-foot-wide corridor. But as we have gone through the years and have heard from people and the advisory committee, they want to build roads based on what is needed.”
As such, the highway department intends to stick to existing corridors and use already acquired rights-of-way as much as possible for future infrastructure development, according to the highway department’s 2009 Vision plan, unveiled Tuesday by Saenz. And the agency will cut the width of proposed corridors from 1,200 feet, which is three times wider than South Padre Island Drive, to 600 feet, which can still accommodate individual and combinations of transportation modes, according to the plan.
“Most people say we need the mobility but what we don’t need is this monster corridor,” said Paula Sales Evans, the Corpus Christi area’s state Transportation Planning and Development director. “To upgrade along existing corridors, I think for South Texas it’s a good thing. The work on I-69, to upgrade (U.S. Highway) 77 from Corpus Christi to the Valley is still moving forward, to upgrade it to an interstate facility.”
The current plan for I-69 winds from Texarkana, around Houston and to Victoria, where it branches out to U.S. Highways 77 and 281, leading to Brownsville and McAllen. It also includes a swath from the Port of Corpus Christi to Laredo that eventually could accommodate a high-speed, port-to-port truck or rail corridor, said Tom Niskala, director of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, a Corpus Christi-area transportation planning agency.
In June the highway department announced that a $1 billion upgrade to the leg of I-69 bringing U.S. 77 from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande Valley up to interstate highway standards would come first.
Saenz said Tuesday that the upgrade to U.S. 77 is still a top priority for the highway department.
Environmental studies necessary before the state can begin right-of-way acquisition or construction for the more than 150 miles of roadway are well under way and could be complete in 2009, according to Niskala. Groundbreaking is three or four years in the future, according to the highway department.
To pay for it, the state intends to use a public-private partnership to fund $1.5 billion in upgrades to existing highway facilities in Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley, which will include tolls for new lanes to handle additional capacity on South Padre Island Drive from the Crosstown Expressway to Ennis Joslin Road.
The more than 150 miles of U.S. 77 from Corpus Christi to Brownsville likely also will have tolled relief routes around Driscoll and Riviera, but otherwise won’t have tolls, according to the highway department.
Trans-Texas Corridor PING!
Well that’s good since it’s almost finished anyway.
I don’t know why it was bad in the first place...
Give me a break..... I-69...
cannot possibly be the name/number for the corridor....
help me....
Do a little research. You’ll find more than enough reasons.
Mean a way transporting goods so I can get a good price is a bad thing????
There was no way this thing was ever going to get off the ground.
Good riddance. Now put a steak in it’s heart so it stays dead.
Don’t forget the stake sauce. :-D
If you're referring to bypassing the west coast ports (i.e. American jobs)in favor of cheaper ports in Mexico, yes. If you're referring to a primary Mexican port of entry in Oklahoma City, yes. Ohterwise, it was a huge land-grab and selling of public infrastructure to foreign conglomerates (Cintra-Zachry in this case).
BTTT
Thanks for the heads up! I am so glad. I wonder if Perry will have to give back the $100,000 donation he got from the Spanish company for selecting them as contractors?
Here’s another of many versions. (why can’t the media stick to one storyline?)
http://www.news8austin.com/content/your_news/?SecID=278&ArID=228394
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