TxDOT backs away from Trans Texas Corridor 69 plan - to look first at using existing highway  

11-14-2007

TOLLROADSnews

Texas DOT are retreating from the concept of Trans Texas Corridors along the route of their #2 TTC - the planned TTC69. Further planning will focus first on upgrading existing highways with new corridor right of way a secondary option. The department is accommodating opposition to the grand - some would say grandiose - plans for wide totally new corridors sweeping across the countryside as announced by Gov Rick Perry in 2002, and pictured in the concept shown below.

The first Trans Texas Corridor TTC35 is a sorth-north route Laredo-San Antonio-Austin-Dallas parallelling I-35 and it is all new right of way. The second, TTC69, trends southwest to northeast following the plan for the unbuilt I-69, traversing the Gulf Coast zone - Laredo, Corpus Christi, Houston, and up to the northeast corner of the state in Texarkana - about 1050km (650 miles) long.

In a statement Nov 13 Amadeo Saenz, TxDOT executive director said of TTC69: “We are doing what the public asked us to do and that is look at existing highways first. If improvements to existing highways and infrastructure cannot be made to handle long range transportation needs — or if citizens and local officials tell us they prefer a new corridor — other options will be considered. Decisions will be made based on public input and detailed studies of environmental and social impacts."

This modest approach has been announced along with release of a thousand page+ Tier One Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The report is available on two TxDOT web sites: http://www.keeptexasmoving.com and http://www.txdot.gov .

The department is making a major public outreach and participation effort in the next stage, where the feasibility of upgrades of existing highways = or as a fallback the precise routing of new corridors - will be determined.

Copies of the report will be put in public libraries up and down the corridor. In January ten town hall style meetings will be held. In February formal hearings will begin, 46 of them seeking comment on the DEIS-I. Regional advisory committees will be set up. Local officials will be consulted and involved.

Ted Houghton, a Texas Transportation Commissioner is quoted: “Local officials will be more involved than ever before and the public will shape the outcome of TTC-69."

Lesser role for tolling

During the first phase local opinion as reflected in meetings favored upgrade rather than new corridors. Upgrade will likely reduce the role of tolling since tolls are more difficult to pitch to the public for an upgraded existing road than for a new one.

Inconsistency between fix-existing and DEIS recommended preferred alternative

There is a disconnect between the decision as announced to focus on the existing highway and the actual DEIS document as released.

The DEIS document describes the "recommended preferred alternative" as new corridors. These are sometimes fairly close to existing highways, but usually sufficiently far from them to avoid existing development along them. The existing highways, 2 and 4 lane surface arterials, have many properties directly accessing them.

The "recommended preferred alternative" corridor in the analysis by contrast is construction in new right of way.

The DEIS Tier I recommended, but now reduced to fallback corridors, going from south to north are:

• the route out of Laredo would be a completely new route heading directly east for Corpus Christi but veering northeast to skirt the developed area

• follow US77 to Victoria

• parallel and just north of US69 from Victoria to the Colorado River

• steer clear of the Houston metro area by heading virtually north 90km to 100km (50 to 60 miles) from the downtown and crossing I-10 and the Brazos River very close to one another

• the Houston metro area would get two connectors to I-69, one in the southwest, the other in the northeast

• goes by not far south on TX6 from College Station (TTI)

• crosses I-45 just north of Walker

• crosses the Trinity River heads north only to do an odd skip back to the south of Trinity township

• picks up the general east of north alignment of US59

• pass east of Nacadoches [Nacogdoches]

• split at Shelby for a branch due east into Louisiana to hook up with I-49 and I-20 in Shreveport and possible I-69 continuation toward Memphis

• western branch continuing due north on the west side of US59 crossing I-20 at Harrison

• – stopping for now at US59 on southside of Texarkana on the Arkansas border and I-30

The announcement by Saenz and TxDOT says in effect that the study's "recommended preferred alternative" corridors shown in the maps of the Tier I report (see above) have not been accepted and the second Tier planning will focus on using the existing highways and upgrading them. The Tier I recommendations above will apparently be used as a fallback in cases where upgrade of existing roads proves infeasible or unacceptable.

COMMENT: This is a major political retreat. It may be a necessary one given the way the legislature rolled TxDOT policies on concessions with the moratorium written into SB792, but it is a retreat nonetheless.

Maybe new corridor construction is not financeable especially if private sector concessions are ruled out by state law.

Fixing the existing highways as tax funds become available may be [all] that can be done.

Clearly the scope for toll financing along TTC69 is greatly reduced.

Semantic issue: Isn't it misleading to retain the term Trans Texas Corridor for a plan which just upgrades the existing highways?

It is also remarkable for a DEIS to be so explicitly rejected by a state DOT. They usually shape the DEIS to their wishes, and it usually represents their position. This is especially in Texas where the DEIS is presented as a wholly TxDOT document. The consultants who wrote it get no mention anywhere.

Maybe the political retreat is quite recent, and happened after the DEIS had chosen the new corridors, outlined in the report.

Texas politics are always lively!

NAFTA Highway ogre

I-69 is the term for the larger project to build a continuous interstate between Detroit Michigan and the lower Rio Grande. It is sometimes referred to as the NAFTA Highway for its support of trade between Mexico the US and Canada. Almost a third of the length of I-69 is in Texas.

'NAFTA Highway' was very much a promotional name a few years ago when trade with Mexico and Canada was popular. Lately however populist politicians like Ron Paul have claimed the NAFTA Highway would facilitate illegal immigration. Some even present it as part of a sinister and stealthy scheme for engineering a North American Union in which the US would be submerged in a mass of Mexicans and Canadians.

All this is ridiculous. Illegal immigration is going to be determined by the relative economic opportunities in Mexico and the US and by US government decisions on immigration policy and on the extent of enforcement - not the state of the roads.

Similarly the extent of "union" with Mexico and Canada will depend on hard decisions by governments in Washington DC, Mexico City and Ottawa about harmonizing laws and treating one another's nationals like their own, not on the state of the roads at Laredo or Niagara.

In the US the NAFTA Highway so-called is always likely to carry mostly intra-state and interstate traffic not international traffic. All the origin and destination studies show that while a proportion of traffic is very long distance and some of that would be international, it is a small minority. Most traffic most places along a long corridor like I-69 will be local traffic.

See http://ttc.keeptexasmoving.com/projects/i69/deis.aspx