Perry Leads Trans Texas Corridor Pep Rally

(August 30, 2006)—Gov. Rick Perry led a bipartisan pep rally Wednesday in DeSoto for the $7 billion Trans Texas Corridor toll road project.

The toll-way is part of an ambitious $184 billion plan to build a network of superhighways, rail corridors and utility paths across the state.

Perry announced that the private sector has offered to build the southern sector of Loop 9 as a toll road.

The proposed loop around the Dallas metro area has been under study for decades and could eventually tie in with the corridor project.

Cintra-Zachry has notified the Texas Department of Transportation that the company is willing to pay for loop's construction.

The news prompted handshakes between local governmental officials who said they have been pushing the project for years.

Opposition comes from those who see it as an attack on private property rights, because many landowners will lose property to the state.

Others object to the state accepting a proposal by a US-Spanish consortium to build and operate it.

The Texas Department of Transportation scheduled 50 hearings on the project last month around the state to give residents a chance to ask questions and register opinions about the Interstate 35 leg of the massive transportation project.

Opponents turned out in substantial numbers at many of the hearings in Central Texas.

TXDOT staff members are now evaluation comments and will submit a final environmental impact statement to the Federal Highway Administration, which is expected to make a decision on the project by the summer of 2007 on whether to allow additional environmental studies within a ten-mile-wide study area, based on which the final route of the corridor would be determined.

The 10-mile-wide study area for the Central Texas leg of the project runs generally along and slightly east of Interstate 35, state transportation officials announced in April as they released a 4,000-page draft environmental impact study that identifies the study area.

The report narrows the study area from Gainesville to Laredo, close to Interstate 35 and metropolitan areas north of San Antonio, but centered on Interstate 35 from south of San Antonio to Laredo.

The Texas Department of Transportation signed a contract in April 2005 with the Cintra-Zachry consortium for planning on the project, the most ambitious highway construction effort since the Eisenhower administration launched the effort to build an interstate highway system.

The plan ultimately calls for a 4,000-mile network of transportation corridors that would crisscross the state with separate highway lanes for passenger vehicles and trucks, passenger rail, freight rain, commuter rail and dedicated utility zones.

Designers envision a corridor with six separate passenger vehicle lanes and four commercial truck lanes; two high speed passenger rail lines, two freight rain lines and two commuter rail lines and a utility zone that will accommodate water, electric, natural gas, petroleum, fiber optic and telecommunications lines.

Cintra, which is an international engineering and construction firm, and the San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Corporation, have agreed to provide $7.2 billion for construction of the first six segments of the project, the governor’s office said.

Cintra will spend $6 billion to build a four-lane toll road on the corridor and will pay the state $1.2 billion in return for the exclusive rights to operate the toll road for 50 years.

Click Here For Interactive Map Of Proposed Corridor Route

Click Here For Trans-Texas Corridor Web Site

Click Here For Background Information On The Trans-Texas Corridor

Click Here For An Opposing Point Of View From Corridor Watch

Click Here For Blackland Coalition Web Site