CorridorWatch Calls For Big Changes In Texas Transportation Agency Leadership

On behalf of our members CorridorWatch has submitted official comments on the Sunset Advisory Commission Staff Report addressing the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT). The Sunset staff report presented 45 specific recommendations under six issue headings. [Sunset Advisory Commission Staff Report]

In our 20-page comment document CorridorWatch addresses all twenty-four recommendations found under the first four of six issue topics. CorridorWatch concurred with five staff recommendations, offers alternatives to seventeen staff recommendations, and makes no comment on the remaining two staff recommendations. No comments were made on any of the 21 staff recommendations found under the last two issues: (5) regulation of motor vehicle dealers, salvage vehicle dealers, and household goods carriers; and, (6) regulation of outdoor advertising. [CorridorWatch Comments: TxDOT]

In producing the comments we followed the format and recommendation numbering system used in the staff report. Most of our recommendations are additions or modifications to the original staff recommendations, and are based on the same supporting detail. Accordingly, it is important to refer to the staff report when considering the recommendations offered by CorridorWatch.

In the process of reviewing and commenting on the staff report CorridorWatch focused on three key elements: Accountability, Transparency and Responsiveness.

CorridorWatch highlights five recommendations as being the most important. In the order of appearance they are:

In making comments to the Sunset Advisory Commission CorridorWatch outlined these guiding principles:

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Welcome to the Internet home of CorridorWatch.org, an organization of concerned Texans and public officials who question the wisdom of the Trans-Texas Corridor.

"I don't think the general public is aware of all the information they need to know . . ."
— Texas Representative Robert "Robby" Cook
(July 4, 2004) [link]

When did you first hear about the Trans-Texas Corridor? 

It's shocking just how few Texans know about this massive super-highway-rail-utility project launched by Governor Perry in 2002.  Ten vehicle lanes, six rail tracks, utilities, pipelines, state concessions (gas stations, restaurants, motels, stores, warehouses, etc.) all on 4,000 miles of toll roads that will consume more than one-half million acres of Texas. MORE>>

Everyone should understand that this isn't another Interstate Highway. It not just a jumbo-sized highway. This Corridor project is a very wide, very flat, extremely limited access, mostly toll, highway-rail-utility corridor. To cross the Corridor at any point will require a quarter-mile long overpass.

"If there is no access to the small towns, it will change the face of the state."
— Will Lowrance, Hillsboro Mayor MORE>>

It will connect to Interstate and other major highways. However, by design it will not provide easy, if any, access to the communities it passes by. It will not spur commercial development along its frontage like our Interstate Highways. There will be no frontage. There will be no opportunity for the owners of property it abuts to develop new or expanded businesses with access to the Corridor. Moreover, it has provisions in the plan and the law to place all possible traveler services on the corridor itself.

Every mile of Corridor will consume 146 acres of land. That's property that will become state owned land - removed from county and school district tax rolls everywhere it extends.

"If it is done the way it's proposed, it will hurt us eventually ..."
— Carlos Vigil, Cooke County Community Development Director MORE>>

Communities with travel and tourism based economies will lose access to those travelers. If the Corridor is successful in attracting traffic away from existing highways communities will suffer significant economic loses.

"With a right-of-way approximately 1,200-feet-wide, the proposed corridor
could change the face of agriculture in Texas forever as it
swallows up thousands of production acres of farmland."
— Juliet Briskin, Country World News (November 4, 2004) [link]

Where will they build the Corridor?

"The Trans Texas Corridor is a state of mind, not an alignment on a map."
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson
(March 25, 2003) [citation] [full text]

The plan adopted by the Texas Transportation Commission outlines 4,000 miles of Corridor to crisscross the entire state. Four of those Corridors have been identified by the Texas Department of Transportation as Priority Corridors to be constructed first (shown below in orange). No effort has been made by the state to identify the specific placement of the Corridors. There are however some known constraints. The Corridors do not directly connect large cities. In fact they go around major urban areas for three prime reasons: one, to keep traffic away from existing urban congestion; two, to keep vehicle air pollution out of urban areas; and three, to provide new routes for the transportation of hazardous materials. Topography will also be very important because of the high-speed rail component of the Corridor. It will be necessary that the Corridor be as straight and level as possible (no uphill or downhill grades or sharp turns).

Note: The Priority Routes alone total 4,000 miles;
the complete TTC Plan totals 8,000 miles.

How did the Trans-Texas Corridor get started?

"What started out as a campaign promise is now in the fast lane."
— Rudy Koski, KVUE News, Austin (March 16, 2004)

In 2002 Governor Perry announced his Corridor vision and instructed TxDOT to prepare an action plan to build the Trans-Texas Corridor. Within six-months TxDOT had completed the plan and presented it to the Transportation Commission. Without any substantive discussion or debate and without public comment the Commission approved the plan as presented on June 27, 2002.  [the plan]

"Once the Governor decided that this is where we needed to head,
he wanted to remove it from the political flow of the state,
he wanted it to become policy as opposed to politics,
and that was one of the reasons he asked us to move so fast,
and we've done an admirable job...."
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson
(June 27, 2002) [full text]

"If this is the governor's plan,
I'd like to have the governor come down and explain it to us."
— Ed Janecka, Fayette County Judge MORE>>

"The Trans-Texas Corridor plan is not the product of transportation professionals, urban planners, sociologists and environmentalists hammering out affordable infrastructure to meet our 21st Century needs. Rather, it was hatched in a smoke-filled room where nobody worried about the needs of ordinary Texans."
— Dick Kallerman, Transportation Issue Coordinator, Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter [more]

Since the plan was developed a series of state laws have been put into place drastically changing the highway construction and financing rules — giving the Texas Transportation Commission unprecedented authority and power. The most significant of these new laws is known as House Bill 3588. [HB-3588]

The Legislature "threw the door wide open . . . and we intend to use it."
— Transportation Commissioner Robert L. Nichols
(Texas Good Roads Annual Meeting: June 30, 2003)

If you're thinking that this won't happen for several years into the  future, you're kidding yourself. The draft agenda for the Transportation Commission's December 2004 meeting includes as item number 11, "Turnpike Project / Various Counties - Approve the selection of the best value proposal for the planning, development, acquisition, design, construction, financing, maintenance, and operation of the Oklahoma-Mexico priority element of the Trans-Texas Corridor system generally paralleling IH 35 (TTC-35); and authorize the department to execute a comprehensive development agreement with the chosen developer." [link]

". . . we are very aggressive, we're very serious about it,
and we are going to move forward on it."
— Phillip Russell, Director, Texas Turnpike Authority Division
(August 20, 2003) [citation] [full text]

It has been their plan for more than a year . . .

The official Trans-Texas Corridor Plan reads,

". . . acquiring property for all components must begin as soon as possible." [plan page 44]
 

"The truth is this is a 50-year plan with an emphasis on the first ten years to get moving
and to focus on the primary corridors as quickly as possible to relieve congestion and
move hazardous material out of our current urbanized areas."
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson
(June 27, 2002) [full text]

"You can't say the idea is a joke when you've got three international companies proposing
multibillion-dollar investments in the first piece."
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson
(July 4, 2004) [link]
 

If you take comfort in the lengthy environmental process and public hearings for a highway project of this massive size, you're in for a rude awakening.  The Federal Highway Administration announced on March 16, 2004, that the first segment of the Trans Texas Corridor (Hillsboro to San Antonio) has been granted 'experimental project' status and construction can begin before the environmental study is complete. MORE>>
 

"Under the streamlined process, public hearings  would still be conducted,
but they would not have to be completed before work started."
— Fort Worth Star-Telegram (March 16, 2004) MORE>>
 

"I think definitely the Trans-Texas Corridor project as a whole, and even any one corridor ... potentially has enormous environmental impacts."
— Ken Kramer, Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter MORE>>
 

There are hundreds of flaws in the plan that one journalist has called, "Perry's Imperial Corridor." There are so many problems its hard to know where to start. 

Are Texans happy about the Corridor Plan?  No, they are not!
 

800 Attend TxDOT Public Hearing in LaGrange.
March 23, 2004

TxDOT Director Responds with Letters to the Editor [text]

 

[ AUSTIN RALLY PHOTO ALBUM ]

 

2007 TAG & TOLL: March & Rally at State Capitol a BIG Success

Farm and ranch groups across rural
Texas marched up Congress Avenue
to the Capitol Building Friday, March 2nd.
Watch for our event report.  MORE>>

 

[ SEATON RALLY PHOTO ALBUM ]  -  [ BLACKLAND COALITION ]

 

 

 

"It's either toll roads, slow roads or no roads"
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson (May 2004)

"Highway tolls are yet another form of regressive taxation, designed to push the burden of public costs downward onto the average taxpayer/driver, while the lion's share of the benefits go to the industries demanding state-subsidized mobility and infrastructure."
— Michael King, Capitol Chronicle: Blame It on the Kids, Austin Chronicle
(February 1, 2002)  [link]

Here are the words of Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williams as presented before the House Transportation Committee, March 25, 2003: [full text]

We have set the Texas Transportation Commission loose on the Texas countryside.

Our legislators have agreed to pay for superhighways without knowing where they will be built. In fact, we are told they are just a state of mind!

This is not a transportation improvement project, it is a revenue generation project.