State Reroutes Plans For Trans-Texas Corridor

June 11, 2008

By Lyndsay Levingston, KPRC TV

HOUSTON -- The Texas Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that it will not build Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor in rural areas north and west of Houston, KPRC Local 2 reported.

Instead, TxDOT will use existing highways for the 600-mile stretch when possible and improve those roads.

The change comes after rural residents protested the plan, in fear of their property being destroyed.

"It's more than a land grab. It's more than people giving up their land. We're talking about Texas, the second largest industry in Agriculture being destroyed," Waller County farm owner Kathryn Wilson said.

"I have worked hard to pay that piece of property off. I am in the recommended proposed route and have been for a number of years. This will wipe me out," East Bernard resident Dee Bond said.

Under the new plan, the corridor will start along the border on three roads -- U.S. Highways 59, 281, and 77. They eventually will merge to Highway 59 and the road continues to Houston, and then forks off at State Highway 84 to Louisiana. It also continues up 59 to Arkansas.

In the Houston area, TxDOT reported the TTC might follow US 59, Loop 610, or the planned Grand Parkway.

If new lanes are added to create the corridor, only those new lanes will have a toll.

The final route would be decided by TxDOT with input from advisory committees of local residents and officials.

State officials have held nearly 50 public meetings and received about 28,000 responses from the public over the proposed project.

The Trans-Texas Corridor, a proposed network of superhighway toll roads, rankles opponents who characterize it as the largest government grab of private property in the state's history and an unneeded and improper expansion of toll roads.

Gov. Rick Perry and transportation officials have defended the project as necessary to address future traffic concerns in one of the nation's fastest-growing states. They also say the project is vital because of insufficient road revenues from the state gas tax and the federal government.

Cost of the project has been estimated at approaching $200 billion, and it could take as long as 50 years to complete.

Supporters of the corridor and toll roads say they are the only way the state's growth can be accommodated without increasing gasoline taxes. In the Lower Rio Grande Valley, people in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have noted with frustration that it is the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway.

Last month, the Texas Transportation Commission adopted guiding policies for developing toll road projects in the Trans-Texas Corridor and the state highway system. They include that only new lanes added to an existing highway would be tolled and there would no reduction in non-tolled lanes.

The state also is to use existing rights-of-way whenever possible for developing new projects.

"The governor is pleased with this announcement and that the Trans-Texas Corridor project is moving forward," Perry spokeswoman Krista Piferrer. "We are now closer to building this road than we ever have been before."