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NAFTA Superhighway Finally Acknowledged by Media Establishment |
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Sunday, 20 April 2008 23:48 |
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Even the New York Times (2/10/08, p. 14) is now prepared to admit that there is such a thing as a NAFTA Superhighway, although they use less threatening characterization: the Trans-Texas Corridor. In a February 10 (p. 14) article, Ralph Blumenthal reported for Times readers, "[T]exans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the state’s – or probably any state’s – history, that would stretch well into the century and, if completed in full, end up costing around $200 billion. …
"The plan envisions a 4,000-mile network of new toll roads, with car and truck lanes, rail lines, and pipeline and utilities zones, to bypass congested cities and speed freight to and from Mexico. …
"At particular issue in South Texas is a stretch of federal Highways 77 and 59 designated part of a proposed new segment of the federal highway system, I-69. But what was to have been a new interstate long sought by some businessmen and local officials is now listed as TTC-69, or part of the Trans-Texas Corridor. …
"The corridor project grew out of the 2002 governor’s race when Rick Perry, the former Republican lieutenant governor who had completed George W. Bush’s unfinished term, surprised transportation experts by taking ideas they had discussed a decade earlier, to little interest, and ‘supersizing them,’ as one recalled.
"The project grew to consist of four ‘priority segments:’ new multimodal toll roads up to 1,200 feet wide paralleling Interstates 35 and 37 from Denison in North Texas to the Rio Grande Valley; a proposed I-69 from Texarkana to Houston and Laredo; I-45 from Dallas-Fort Worth to Houston; and I-10 from El Paso to Orange on the Louisiana border. But the exact routes are years away from being designated.
"With construction, land acquisition and other expenses, the cost was estimated in 2002 at up to $183.5 billion, all of it to be put up by private investors, state officials say. No existing roads would gain tolls.
"The first planning contract, for a segment paralleling I-35, was awarded in 2004 to a partnership of Cintra, a publicly traded transportation giant based in Madrid, and the Zachary Construction Corporation of San Antonio. But lawmakers, concerned over the public outcry, put the brakes on additional contacts until next year.
"Legislators also asked transportation officials last week to explain why they were complaining of budget shortfalls while failing to use $9 billion in voter-approved bonding authority.
"Now that 12 town meetings have concluded and the agency this month began the first of 46 public hearings to run through next month, Mr. Saenz said, ‘We have now gotten to first base.’"
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