Lianne Hart writes about the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, and it sounds pretty awesome.
HOUSTON — Do not mistake the Trans-Texas Corridor for a mere superhighway.• Latimes.com home page
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As imagined by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the $175-billion project will be a transportation behemoth of mind-boggling proportions: 4,000 miles of mostly toll lanes perhaps a quarter-mile wide, capable of carrying cars, trucks, and high-speed freight and commuter trains.
There would be room underground for oil, water, electric and gas pipelines, and the whole works would be built largely with private money.
I've got concerns about the state using eminent domain to buy private land on the cheap to then lease to commercial interests along the corridor. Since everything is being built with private money -- in theory -- why not let the private corporations buy land at the going rate? Still though, as long as the prices paid are better than fair, I don't have a real problem with the proposal as it's described.
One of the key ideas appears to be that the corridors will bypass major urban areas, and allow city-bound traffic to use existing intersecting highways to reach their destinations. I can envision a whole network of corridors spanning the country, even the hemisphere, and it's great to see Texas advancing this type of super project.
Of course the environmentalists won't like it because they want us all to ride trains and bicycles, but whatever. Building all that new infrastructure could provide a good excuse for introducing hydrogen refueling stations and vast expanses of solar cells.
Gov. Perry is certainly being visionary, but I'm skeptical on this... I haven't studied the proposal too seriously, but there seems to be more "hat" than "cattle" in this idea. (I'm a Texan... I get to use the hat/cattle thing.)
Texas has 261,797 sq. mi. of land area... a thin ribbon 1/4 mile wide slicing through that may provide rapid acces from point A to B, but only if you live within a certain distance of that ribbon. As for delivering fiber optic broadband, isn't the infrastructure already being developed?
Once upon a time, The Onion had a headline that read: "Los Angeles Now 70% Overpasses".
This story reminded me of it.
gaw: I think the point is to move stuff across the state without passing through existing urban areas, to improve throughput and reduce congestion.
Mark: I wish we had more freeways.
The whole thing sounds awfully centralized to me. There's plenty of room in Texas to go around the cities. The problem is that all the stuff from the ports doesn't need to go to one place. If it's headed into the plains, then it needs to branch out into a network of smaller branches that can really cover some area.
It all sounds eerily similar to the great railroad projects of the 19th century: It sounds like a grand transportation scheme that's marginally connected with a legitimate need, but the real point is to generate opportunities for bribes, kickbacks, and political wrangling over which towns will be on the big transportation corridor. It's been a while since I read the history of those transcontinental railroads, but IIRC they were mostly financial catastrophes that were riddled with corruption.
While I share the worries about government land acquisition, I think that a trans-Texas corridor is a great thing, especially if it's picked up on the border by other states. It would certainly be a great start to a new generation NAFTA highway.
The Trans Texas Corridor is one of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's pet projects. It is a massive toll road that will swallow up over a half million acres of rural land via eminent domain. That land will become government property used not only for transportation but as State owned rental property in direct competition with local business. Governor Perry's aide, Dan Shelley, worked for Cintra, the Spanish firm that won the $7.2B bid for the road project. Unfortunately, few voters know much about it. For more info, you can check the following links:
http://www.corridorwatch.org/ttc/index.htm
http://blog.deltos.com/SJR/archives/000358.html
http://www.firericwilliamson.com/
http://www.houstonfreeways.com/statesman_2004-12-12.htm
http://www.keeptexasmoving.com/about/
http://keathmilligan.net/view.php?id=421
As the corporations who are building the trans texas corridors start into the projects, they will start drilling oil, gas, and water wells on "their" land,(inside the corridors), and start sucking out all the gas, oil, and water for miles and miles on each side of the corridors, and all over Texas!
I think that including a little cycle path in this gigantic project would be a drop in the bucket, and should also be encoraged. Currently in Texas there are many routes used by local and visiting bikers that are very dangerous. I know 105 is a popular route for bike tourist, but in places there are NO shoulders, and that makes it dangerous for bikers, and results in traffic difficulties for motorists. Some people think, What good is bike tourism economically? Well, you should try to imagine how much food and lodging is required for a group of four, that must purchase everything they require from local sources, in small quantities. You get the benifits, without wear and tear on the roads, without pollution, without congestion, and visitors who remain in state 5 to 10 times longer than the average traveller. If that is not worth promoting, I don't know what is! Greenways!