Tens of thousands of opponents to a NAFTA highway project that would have crossed Texas with a corridor the width of four football fields have been given good news by the state: the Trans-Texas Corridor plan is being dropped.
Official word came from Amadeo Saenz Jr., the chief of the Texas Department of Transportation, during the state’s annual transportation forum in Austin this week.
“The Trans-Texas Corridor, as a single-project concept, is not the choice of Texans, so we decided to put the name to rest,” he said, according to the Houston Chronicle. “To be clear, the Trans-Texas Corridor as it is known, no longer exists.
“Texans have spoken, and we’ve been listening,” Saenz said in a statement released by the department. “Citizens across the state have had good ideas about how Texas roads can better serve Texas communities.”
He said work will continue on highway projects, but there will be changes.
“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,” his statement said.
Saenz said the department would be working on the Innovative Connectivity in Texas/Vision 2009 program. The project transforms the original TTC vision, making changes in corridor width, transportation mode, use of existing facilities, timeline and other issues, he said.
The original vision for the TTC, according to the statement, was outlined in Crossroads of the Americas: Trans-Texas Corridor Plan. It called for a corridor of up to 1,200 feet in width that would allow rails highways, special lanes for freight trucks as well as utilities.
But WND reported extensively on opposition to the plan, which was quickly labeled a NAFTA highway that would provide transportation routes for mass quantities of Chinese goods imported into Mexico, then hauled throughout the United States and Canada.
Texas officials said after the concept was introduced in 2002 communities along the proposed transportation corridors raised numerous objections and concerns.
“TxDOT agrees with many of the recommendations of the I-35 and I-69 Corridor Advisory Committees, citizen advisory groups created to participate in planning transportation projects along the two TTC project corridors already under way,” the Texas agency statement said.
“Major corridor projects will now be comprised of several small segments closer to 600 feet wide and will no longer be called the Trans-Texas Corridor. Instead, the department will use the highway numbers originally associated with each segment, such as I-69, SH 130 and Loop 9.”
The agency also said whether any projects will include rail or other services remains to be determined.
“I’m pleased with the level of public involvement called for in this document,” Saenz said. “I’m hopeful that, working together, we’ll develop a corridor that serves both the economic interests of the state and the needs of each individual community.”
The $184 billion TTC project originally called for a 4,000-mile network of transportation corridors, 1,200 feet wide, to be built across Texas. The plan would have taken about a half million agricultural acres out of private hands, leading to a maelstrom of objections from Texas landowners.
WND reported earlier when state officials admitted they were dropping specific segments of the project.
Saenz said then the department would consider “only existing highway” routes for the project’s expansions.
The TxDOT website said then “the preliminary basis for this decision centers on the review of nearly 28,000 public comments made” on the issue.
Saenz’s latest announcement earned approval from several watchdog groups, including David Stall of the citizen’s group Corridor Watch.
“We’re real pleased that a project once described as unstoppable has now screeched to a halt,” he told the Houston newspaper.
On a comment forum at the newspaper, one participant withheld nothing.
“YES!” the commenter wrote. “We do have a voice.”
Added another, “This debacle was going to have a highway running from the Mexican coast, where goods were to be unloaded from ships, straight to Kansas City where the first inspections of the goods would take place. … I’m serious, that was the plan and the public outcry shut it down. But rest assured, it will be revived under the ‘Innovative Connectivity Plan.’…
He reported as the U.S. and global economies slow, the volume of freight being moved via intermodal ship-train-truck connections also was slowing.
The slowdown reduced the pressure to reconfigure U.S. transportation systems through projects like the TCC into an integrated infrastructure to serve the needs of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.
“Still, the pressure to reconfigure the U.S. into NAFTA Superhighway container-moving structures should be expected to resume, perhaps even as a stimulus to jump start now lagging global ‘free trade,'” Corsi wrote.
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