Paved with bad intentions?

April 18, 2007

FEW issues find common ground among right-wing conservatives and left-of-center liberals. But the so-called "NAFTA Superhighway," potentially stretching from the Mexican border to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn., is apparently one of them.

Across the political spectrum people have worked themselves into a frenzy over a massive futuristic transportation project that may simply be a figment of their imagination. Talk of a new north-south Texas toll road to accommodate extra truck traffic coming from Mexico has renewed bipartisan passion about the feared superhighway.

There is almost a conspiratorial edge to some critics who are convinced that the "Trans-Texas Corridor," being planned by Texas and federal highway officials, is just the first phase of a much larger operation designed to run through the heart of the country itself.

Some, like Toledo Democrat Marcy Kaptur, envision a multiple lane highway facilitating the movement of cheap goods made by cheap labor to U.S. consumers. Ohio's leading NAFTA critic obviously worries that making it even easier to transport cut-rate products to American markets could have a profoundly adverse impact on American jobs, especially in the auto-manufacturing Midwest.

"It would be like a huge blood-line into our part of the country," she said. Ms. Kaptur has made fact-finding trips to Texas, where state transportation officials insist the new thoroughfare is simply a more efficient way to accommodate extra trucks traversing the state. There are no plans, they say, for a new superhighway.

Indeed, this could all be a simple case of adding one and one and imagining the worst.

But Ms. Kaptur also heard from Texans opposed to the proposed toll road - running parallel to Interstate 35 - who are convinced a much grander scheme is not just conjecture. They firmly believe the move to link Mexican ports with the new highway involves more than merely the logistics of traversing Texas.

They and a growing number of believers on the right and left think the Texas road is the turning point for exporters trying to save money and time by funneling U.S. bound goods through Mexican ports instead of California ones. Ms. Kaptur is joined by the Teamsters Union in pressing her added concerns about an influx of Mexican truckers driving poorly maintained trucks into the U.S.

She's already introduced a bill banning Mexican truckers from most U.S. roads and the Teamsters are educating Congress about the dangers of easing imported goods from Mexican ports into the U.S.

Fears of a so-called NAFTA Superhighway may be unfounded, but few are willing to take a chance they could be wrong.