TxDOT Pulls the Plug on Massive Trans-Texas Corridor Concept

DALLAS - With its own future in question, the Texas Department of Transportation is abandoning the Trans-Texas Corridor as a planning concept, executive director Amadeo Saenz said yesterday.

"Texans have spoken, and we've been listening," Saenz told 1,200 people at the Texas Transportation Forum in Austin yesterday. "The days of the Trans-Texas Corridor are over."

Proposed in 2002 by Gov. Rick Perry as a $150 billion network of rail lines and tollways, the TTC became a symbol to some legislators of what they saw as TxDOT's excessive power. Under the scenarios envisioned by Perry and the late Texas Transportation Commission chairman Ric Williamson, private developers would build, own, and operate many of the tollways that would divert commercial traffic from existing highways between Texas' southern and northern borders.

The Trans-Texas Corridor plan called for a corridor of up to 1,200 feet in width that would allow for several modes of transportation in addition to utility transmission facilities. The plan really called for two corridors, one parallel to Interstate 35 and another to the south called Interstate 69 that would carve a new path from the southern tip of Texas eastward toward Houston and then north to Texarkana on the Arkansas border.

In public hearings, angry landowners and farmers spoke out against the massive project, saying it would disrupt their lives.

"Citizens across the state have had good ideas about how Texas roads can better serve Texas communities," Saenz said. "I believe this transformed vision for the TTC and other major corridor development goes a long way toward addressing the concerns we've heard over the past several years."

While the corridor was still in early phases of development, Saenz said the project will be built in smaller segments closer to 600 feet wide and will no longer be called the Trans-Texas Corridor.

The department will use the highway numbers originally associated with each segment. In addition, TxDOT will seek guidance from corridor segment advisory committees - made up of citizens from affected communities along each corridor segment - to design and build facilities that meet the needs of the region.

The decision to drop the TTC concept comes a week before the 2009 Texas legislative session, where transportation issues again take center stage. In the 2007 session, lawmakers placed a moratorium on private tollroad development in the state and ordered a special legislative committee to review issues and make recommendations in the upcoming session.

In addition to reconsidering private tollway development, the Legislature will consider Sunset Commission recommendations on TxDOT. The Sunset Commission recommended major changes to the way TxDOT operates, including replacing its governing board, the five-member Texas Transportation Commission, with a single commissioner.

The governor's backing for the corridor has stirred political opposition in his own Republican Party. During a visit to Texas troops in Iraq yesterday, Perry told reporters: "We really don't care what name they attach to building infrastructure in the state of Texas. They key is we have to go forward and build it."

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