The Trans Texas Corridor

Massive road project endangers landscapes and the environment

September 4, 2007

Environmental Defense

Even the old adage that they don't do anything small in Texas doesn't fully capture the magnitude of the proposed Trans Texas Corridor transportation project.

As planned, this would be a 4,000 mile-long network of tolled auto and truck lanes, high-speed freight and passenger rail tracks, and right- of -way for electric power lines and gas and water pipelines. The initial segments would run south and north through the heart of the state.

The TTC's quarter-mile wide corridors would parallel major Interstate highways, take 900 square miles of land, and affect 600,000 acres of land and water habitat. The cost estimates are a whopping $184 billion.

The purpose of the TTC is to  speed the flow of goods from Latin America and Asia through Texas to the Midwest, the Northeast and Canada. As such, TTC is not designed to address Texas' own transportation problems, which are in the metropolitan areas; TTC would bypass major cities and rural communities.

Authority for the TTC was granted in 2002 in the last hours of the Texas legislative session as a 300-page transportation bill was rushed through with neither serious legislative debate nor consultation with commissioners, local city officials or regional planning agencies. The public and most local officials first became aware of the project in 2005 when the Texas Department of Transportation (DOT) held one public meeting in each of the 254 counties.

The US DOT is rushing through approvals of the corridor's initial segments. TTC-69 from Texarkana to Laredo is being expedited under President Bush’s 2002 Executive Order while I-35 from Dallas to Laredo is advancing under special accelerated project development procedures.

As public opposition to the TTC has grown over its environmental and property impacts, it became a major issue in the 2006 statewide elections, drawing opposition from the Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, and Independent Parties as well as the Farm Bureau, the Cattle raisers, environmental organizations, and hundreds of local city councils and county commissioner’s courts.

In response to the popular opposition, a 2007 bill put a two year moratorium on all public private road concession agreements and established a legislative study group on these contracts. Texas DOT can continue to contract for design and financing elements of the plan and continue environmental assessments, but cannot yet advance to construction.

Meanwhile, the first stage environmental review of the initial TTC corridors have looked only at alternative corridor alignments, not considering options for better operating and managing existing roads and rail lines nor considering how strategic investments might relieve bottlenecks on the existing rail or road system, rather than creating entirely new transportation corridors.

Environmental Defense has joined with other groups in calling the TTC an environmental disaster. It  would destroy wildlife habitat and consume prime farmland. In crossing Texas' major rivers, it will harm water quality. Air quality and human health will also be put at risk.

The TTC will bisect rural communities while promoting greater sprawl, more miles driven, greater dependence on imported oil, and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Texas DOT is proceeding with the next stages of environmental review. As it does so, there are opportunities to devote resources to enable local and regional officials and stakeholders to develop a bottoms-up vision for Texas that might better serve community and economic development needs and greatly reduce the environmental impacts and social costs of building on natural, undeveloped land.