Traffic jams delay global trade

April 17, 2007

Jim Landers, DALLAS MORNING NEWS

If you find yourself caught in a Texas traffic jam, you may be part of the latest twist in protectionism.

Members of Congress from Ohio are teaming up with opponents of the TransTexas Corridor to see if they can block what they regard as an import superhighway threatening Ohio manufacturing jobs.

There is even fear among some Midwestern bloggers that the corridor represents an assault on sovereignty, where foreign trade moving on foreign-owned toll roads leads to a union among the United States, Mexico and Canada.

The TTC, which would roughly parallel Interstate 35, has lots of homegrown opposition that is keeping it bottled up.

Multiple auto and truck toll lanes, multiple rail tracks and a utility right-of-way, bundled into a swath of land 1,200 yards wide and 800 miles long – this was never going to be an easy sell.

The Texas House of Representatives has approved a two-year timeout on toll roads. Senate action also appears likely.

David Stall of corridorwatch .com, which opposes the TransTexas Corridor, doesn't like privatizing superhighways, adding to congestion in the state or cursory environmental impact studies.

He'll take allies where he can find them and intends to move the fight to Washington after the legislative session ends in Austin.

He met last month with Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, who came to Austin to review corridor watch.com's materials.

"At the low end, we are going to build a road of some sort here, and it will have a very real impact on Texans," Mr. Stall said.

"On the other extreme is this talk about a North America union. That's too theoretical to us. It's much easier to just address the brick-and-mortar issues without getting into global politics."

But Texas transportation is a global issue.

China is helping Mexico modernize the port of Lazaro Cárdenas to avoid congestion at California ports by sending cargoes from the Mexican Pacific to Laredo and beyond.

As the Panama Canal expands, more container ships will reach the port of Houston and transfer their cargoes to trucks and trains heading up the middle of the country from Dallas to Chicago.

The North American Free Trade Agreement has filled I-35 with trucks. A free-trade deal with South Korea, if approved by Congress, will mean much greater trade with Asia, and a lot of that would come to Texas.

"We're trying to alert everyone that a crisis is coming, a trade tsunami," said Tiffany Melvin, executive director of North America's SuperCorridor Coalition Inc. in Dallas.

"If we don't do something, I-35 will continue to be a parking lot and will only get worse until something is done."

Dallas became a thriving city thanks to its successful courtship of railroads and highways, and it became a hub of global trade thanks to the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Whether or not the TransTexas Corridor is the best way to build on those successes, transportation improvements are vital to the area's economic future.

Some in Ohio see it the other way around. Rep. Kaptur told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that she's concerned about Asian cargoes carried on Mexican trucks costing the jobs of American drivers and longshoremen.

Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, is co-sponsoring a resolution opposing a NAFTA superhighway crossing the nation's midsection.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has said he wants to hold hearings about the highway.

Ms. Melvin said Texas highways are not robbing Ohio of jobs and jamming those highways won't bring those jobs back.

"If they worry about Asian goods coming into Ohio, it's a supply-and-demand issue. At Wal-Mart, Home Depot and the rest, the demand is there, so the supply will be there. It has nothing to do with a new, giant highway," she said.

It's also worth remembering that highways carry traffic in both directions. Slowing traffic into the country also slows exports going out.

"Don't we wish that would happen," Ms. Kaptur said. "That's not how it turned out with NAFTA. What's being exported are our jobs."