A quarter-mile scar across the Texas landscape
Say hello to the Trans-Texas Corridor (link):
In what sounds like another tall tale told by a Texan, the state has embarked on an audacious project to build superhighways so big and so complex that they will make ordinary interstates look like cow paths.
The Trans-Texas Corridor project, as first envisioned by Republican Gov. Rick Perry in 2002, would be a 4,000-mile transportation network costing $175 billion over 50 years, financed mostly if not entirely with private money. The builders then would charge motorists tolls...
...they would be megahighways - corridors up to a quarter-mile across, consisting of as many as six lanes for cars and four for trucks, plus railroad tracks, oil and gas pipelines, water and other utility lines, and broadband transmission cables...
...But as the plan rumbles along in the fast lane, some have called it a Texas-size boondoggle. Environmentalists are worried about what it will do to the countryside. Ranchers and farmers who stand to lose their land through eminent domain are mobilizing against it. Small towns and big cities alike fear a loss of business when traffic is diverted around them...
A quarter mile is four football fields...
Note also that almost all the land in Texas is privately owned. While the BLM and other federal agencies own vast swaths of other western states, Texas has no or very little BLM land.
(Via the loonitarians here, who have more to say and more links)
Comments
concermed citizen (not verified)
Wed, 03/02/2005 - 11:58
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Craddick's new congressional district has surrounded all the finer things in Texas, including most of the water, oil, pecans, cattle, and includes both Luckenback and Lowake! Now here comes the Trans Texas Corridor. The foreign contractors building the corridors will drill for oil, water, and gas! They will suck out all the oil, water, and gas from underneath the poor farmers and ranchers bordering the corridors all over Texas! They will haul off all the rocks, dirt, sand and gravel, wood, and anything else they can get theirs hands on! And I most assuredly assure you that they will pick up and haul off any arrowhead that they find!
Porkus Maximus (not verified)
Wed, 02/02/2005 - 17:54
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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