The idea came from Dr. Hal B. H. Cooper, Jr., who created it while he was a professor of civil engineering at Texas A&M in 1974. Cooper's idea, now known as the "Cooper Corridor" concept, was to take a swath of land and cram into it a highway, rail line, power lines, superconducting wire lines, and pipelines for petroleum, water, CO2 and other items. Cooper is a member of Lyndon LaRouche's organization and is the source of LaRouche's idea for building something like this from Mexico to Russia. But note that the emphasis on Cooper's idea is for rail to be the prime mover.
Last year, Gov. Perry of Texas, a Republican, launched the Trans-Texas Corridor project, which is 4000 miles of Cooper Corridors linking all the population centers of the state. A few weeks ago, Perry finally admitted that he had borrowed the idea from Cooper.
In Washington State, the Cascade Foothills Corridor is a Cooper Corridor project aimed at moving these kinds of infrastructure items around the populated areas of Puget Sound and into the foothills of the Cascades. The legislature has funded a feasibility study for this project, and work will begin soon on the study.