Trans-Texas Corridor
[1] It was intended to route long-distance traffic around population centers, and to provide stable corridors for future infrastructure improvements–such as new power lines from wind farms in West Texas to the cities in the east–without the otherwise often lengthy administrative and legal procedures required to build on privately owned land.
According to the Houston Chronicle, on January 6, 2009, "In response to public outcry, the ambitious proposal to create the Trans-Texas Corridor network has been dropped and will be replaced with a plan to carry out road projects at an incremental, modest pace".
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) attempted to provide oversight for planning, construction, and maintenance while day-to-day operations would have been performed by private companies.
This agreement did not designate the alignment, authorize construction, set toll rates or who collects them, and did not eliminate competition for future services.
[8] There were two initial trans-Texas corridors under consideration: One would have paralleled Interstate 35 (I-35), from Gainesville to Laredo and passing the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Austin and San Antonio.
[9] ACS-Zachry, a partnership between Spanish-based toll-road developer/operator ACS and Texas-based Zachry Construction, was awarded a $3.5 million contract to help plan the entire TTC-35 route in March 2005.
On October 7, 2009, TxDOT officials announced that the department would recommend the "No Action Alternative", which effectively ended the efforts to develop the Interstate 35 corridor through the TTC concept.
Segments 1-4 of SH 130 were built by Lone Star Infrastructure in the Austin metropolitan area as an eastern relief route for Interstate 35.
On June 28, 2006, ACS-Zachry reached a $1.3 billion agreement with the state to build segments 5 and 6 of SH 130,[14] which could have represented the alignment of TTC-35's highway component between Interstate 10 at Seguin east of San Antonio and U.S. Route 79 near Taylor, Texas.
The latest plan called for adding a second carriageway and eliminating at-grade intersections along US-59 and US-77 in rural areas, with tolled bypasses around major cities and towns along the I-69 route.
A citizens uprising was started in 2003 by Linda and David Stall of Fayette County, after reading a small notice in a trade paper about a hearing to be held by TxDOT in their rural town of Fayetteville, Texas.
Its chair Sputnik helped to develop Stall's network into an immense, diverse coalition of voters opposed to the corridor.
[citation needed] The planned system, if built out to its fullest extent, could have required about 584,000 acres (2,360 km2) of land to be purchased or acquired through the state's assertion of eminent domain.
[24] Opponents also alleged that noise from the TTC would be of such a high volume that it would render the area within one mile (1.6 km) of the corridor uninhabitable by humans, at least during periods of peak traffic on all components of the corridor (freight and passenger rail, truck lanes, and passenger lanes) if they are colocated and built to full capacity.
[25] According to TxDOT documents released in June 2002, "Governor Rick Perry wrote Transportation Commission Chairman John W. Johnson on January 30, 2002 to outline his vision for the Trans Texas Corridor.
"[2] In spite of public complaints–and both the 2006 platforms of the Texas Republican[26] and Democratic[27] parties opposing the plan–Governor Rick Perry continued to support the TTC.
[28] Among the opponents to the corridor was the Republican State Representative Lois Kolkhorst of Washington County, who opposed on the basis that the project would undermine private property rights.
[29] In the 2010 gubernatorial elections, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison ran several attack advertisements regarding the TTC as Perry's attempts to expand government and take land from the average Texan.
