Thread: The Trans-Texas Corridor; China Bought Canadian Oil Sands

The Trans-Texas Corridor Rises From the Dead -

Texas Revives Plans to Build Public-Private Partnership Toll Roads



April 11, 2011
By Jerome R. Corsi
several links on this post

Believe it or not, the Trans-Texas Corridor is back.

State Representative Larry Phillips has introduced in the Texas legislature HB3789, a bill designed to allow public-private partnerships, better known as PPPs, to develop toll roads throughout Texas.

The only thing missing is the name "Trans-Texas Corridor" and the comprehensive development agreement, or CDA, that specifies the private partners involved in building the new generation of Texas toll roads.

In all, some 26 bills have been introduced into the Texas legislature that would sell a wide variety of public infrastructure, including highways, mass transit facilities, hospitals, schools, recreational facilities, public buildings, technology architecture, and even parking lots to private corporations in some fashion.

Texas, like some 40 other states facing budget deficits that could lead to significant cut-backs in public services, has gone the route of "America for Sale" in the enthusiasm to convert freeways into toll roads and government infrastructure into PPP projects that would permit, if not invite, foreign private corporate involvement and ownership.

The TTC never really died: the I-69 NAFTA Superhighway advances under Obama

In January 2009, Amadeo Saenz, the executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, proclaimed http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... 00ac6.html to the Dallas News, "Make no mistake: The Trans-Texas Corridor, as we have known it, no longer exists.

The operative qualifying clause in that proclamation was the phrase "as we have known it," given that the Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, appears alive and well.

Evidence on numerous government and industry alliance websites shows the TTC project is proceeding under the cover of being broken up into two separate projects and rebranded as the I-35 Corridor and the I-69 corridor.

Moreover, TxDOT appears to have made a strategic decision to begin first with the I-69 Corridor that had received less attention during the Trans-Texas Corridor battle that raged in Texas during the Bush administration, in the years 2006-2008.

That the U.S. Department of Transportation under the Obama administration continues to harbor the dream of Mexico-to-Canada NAFTA superhighways is made clear by the Federal Highway Administration website http://www.corridors.dot.gov/i69.htm that proclaims the "Corridor: Interstate 69 (I-69) — Texas to Michigan" to be fully operational under the following project description: "The 2,680-mile international and interstate trade corridor extends from Mexico to Canada."

The DOT even proclaims the I-69 Corridor under the original understanding of the TTC as a inter-modal automobile-truck-railroad corridor:

"This application [I-69 Corridor] includes freight and passenger movement through a portion of the country that is experiencing both demographic and freight movement growth. The current infrastructure from Texas to Michigan already handles a large flow of goods and this corridor has the potential to shift cargo patterns to relive existing and projected congestion along existing routes (e.g., I-40, I-65, I-81). This corridor has already been identified by Congress as a high priority corridor, is one of the farthest along in clearly defining its project list, and has the political support of all the states involved."

The Federal Highway Administration further states that many of the states have done developmental work, and there are 32 separate segments, "all of which are in varying stages of development from acquisition of right-of-way to environmental review and design."

A website created by a trade group http://www.i69texas.org/ organized under the name "Alliance for I-69 Texas" provides a map that details the Texas cities involved in the I-69 Corridor project

The Alliance for I-69 Texas website makes clear that I-69 is a combination of two federally designated High Priority Corridors: (a) Corridor 18, extending from Michigan and Illinois, south through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, terminating at the end of U.S. 77 and U.S. 281 in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and (b) Corridor 20, designated as U.S. 59, from Texarkana to Laredo.

The website further points out that the I-69 border crossing points from Laredo to Brownsville, Texas, handle 49 percent of the total U.S. truck-borne trade with Mexico, while the I-69 border crossing in Michigan handle 47 percent of the U.S. truck-borne trade with Mexico.

The TTC: a look-back to the Bush era

Quietly but systematically, the Bush administration in conjunction with Governor Perry in Texas advanced the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, 4 football-fields-wide, through the heart of Texas, parallel to Interstate-35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas, to the Texas border with Oklahoma.

The Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) moved ahead to begin construction following the re-election of Governor Perry in November 2006.

Plans to build TTC-35 were fully disclosed on KeepTexasMoving.org, a now defunct official Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) website.

On March 11, 2005, a "Comprehensive Development Agreement" was signed by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to build the "TTC-35 High Priority Corridor" parallel to Interstate-35.

The contracting party involved a limited partnership formed between Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A.,[1] a publically-listed company headquartered in Spain, majority controlled by the Madrid-based Groupo Ferrovial, and a San Antonio-based construction company, Zachry Construction Corporation.

The Cintra deal meant that once the TTC was completed, U.S. citizens who want to drive on the TTC from one Texas site to another, perhaps from Austin to Dallas or from Dallas to San Antonio, will end up having to pay an investment consortium in Spain for the privilege to do so.

Still, somewhat incomprehensible to most U.S. citizens, these "Public-Private Partnerships" involve selling off key U.S. infrastructure projects to foreign entities.

Granted, the "ownership" rights of projects like TTC-35 will remain with the state of Texas, yet selling off the leasing rights amounts in the thinking of most U.S. citizens to selling off the highway to foreign interests for the term of the lease.

Under the terms of the TTC agreements with TxDOT, Cintra would have the rights to operate TTC-35 for 50 years and to collect all tolls on the road in that period of time.

The Comprehensive Development Agreement called for Cintra-Zachry to provide private investment of $6 billion "to fully design, construct and operate a four-lane 316 mile toll road between Dallas and San Antonio for up to 50 years as the initial segment of TTC-35.

For this, Cintra-Zachry paid the State of Texas $1.2 billion for the long-term right to build and operate the initial segment as a toll facility.

In April 2006, TxDOT released a 4,000 page Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for what was described as the "Trans-Texas Corridor — 35 (TTC-35) Oklahoma to Mexico/Gulf Coast Element."

The April 2006 EIS made clear that Cintra-Zachry planned to build a 1200 foot-wide (approximately four football fields wide) complex involving ten lanes of highway — five lanes in each direction, north and south, with three lanes in each direction reserved for passenger vehicles and two separate lanes reserved for trucks.

The EIS design included six rail lines running parallel to the highway, with separate rail lines in each direction for high-speed rail, commuter rail, and freight rail.

Finally, the design called for a 200-foot wide utility corridor that include pipelines for oil and natural gas, pipelines for both water, cables for telecommunications and data, as well as electricity towers running the length of the TTC.

According to the TxDOT Trans-Texas Corridor Plan adopted in June 2002, TxDOT ultimately plans to build some 4,000 miles of highway-railway-utility super-corridors throughout Texas over the next 50 years, using some 584,000 acres of what is now Texas farm and ranchland, at an estimated cost of $184 billion.

The TTC plan left little doubt TTC toll-road super-corridors were designed to facilitate international trade primarily, speeding trucks and trains carrying "inter-modal" containers from Mexican ports to destinations in the heartland of the United States.

The full TTC build-out will move goods through Texas rapidly, by-passing the major cities.

Texas scrapped the TTC plan in 2009, after a series of combative town hall meetings throughout the state showed TxDOT the plan faced massive taxpayer resistance.

1. The website of Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. can be found at http://www.cintra.es/

http://jeromecorsi.com/article.php?id=72

Related and a very important read; so you know exactly what is going on

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-248531-.html

and Perry is now running for POTUS .. what do you think he will do with the Trans Texas Corridor when in Office

Millions of acres U.S. Land will be taken from Owners so the Globalist can build their dream and take US Sovereignty away

Romney.. dont know.. but I dont trust him