By Shelley Kofler, KERA News
Dallas, TX – Plans for Governor Perry's Trans-Texas Corridor are dead. The announcement came at a Department of Transportation forum in Austin. KERA's Shelley Kofler reports state officials killed the unpopular project just as legislators were preparing to debate it again.
The Department of Transportation's executive director dropped the bombshell before a crowd of 1,200 industry professionals saying: Texans have spoken and we've been listening.
Dallas Senator John Carona, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, couldn't be more pleased.
Carona: I think it's great news for people of this state because we heard overwhelmingly for many months now that people did not want to see a corridor built for a variety of different reasons.
As a strong critic of the corridor, Carona sponsored legislation that placed restrictions on its construction. He presided over volatile public hearings, including one last legislative session which attracted more than 1,000 opponents from across the state.
Carona says landowners and environmentalists were among those who objected to the Governor's concept of building a statewide transportation system with a main corridor that stretched from Mexico to Oklahoma. Opponents said the 1,200-foot width of the corridor with roads, rail lines, utilities and more was just too much.
Carona: The notion of going out into deep rural farmlands of the state and building this corridor at the expense of landowners and go through a very aggressive pattern and process of takings of land, I think that's what people found unacceptable. Just downright un-Texan.
On a conference call with reporters, Governor Perry said he agreed with the transportation department's decision to scale down the project he unveiled seven years ago. He suggested that poor public relations was part of the problem.
Perry: I think the concept of the Trans-Texas Corridor was one that frankly got misunderstood. The idea that there was misrepresentation of what it was certainly plays into the decision TxDOT made, and I support their decision.
But Perry defended his vision, saying it is important to think big when it came to big challenges like transportation gridlock.
Perry: I'm not afraid of taking on big and tough issues because I think that's what Texans want from their leaders is someone who will stand up and lead, not take take the easy way out.
Carona says sections of the corridor project, especially those planned for congested urban areas, are still on the drawing board. The focus will now be on individual local projects instead of one border-to border artery.
Eliminating this hot political potato less than a week before the legislature meets means Carona and his transportation committee can now focus on how to pay for roads Texans want, instead of how to block roads they don't want.