By Shelley Kofler, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-864285.mp3
Dallas, TX –
Texas transportation officials will today announce plans to stop developing the Trans-Texas Corridor. KERA's Shelley Kofler says that kills the corridor project, at least for the near future.
When Governor Rick Perry unveiled the Trans-Texas Corridor plan in 2001 it called for a statewide network of arteries a quarter-mile wide that included toll roads, light rail, utilities and more. Over the years the plan was downsized, but it continued to include a toll-road that stretched from Mexico to Oklahoma and ran parallel to Interstate 35.
The Texas Department of Transportation says it is announcing an end to developing the toll-road. The farm bureau's Gene Hall says that's good news. Many rural Texans fought the corridor because it would have carved up numerous farms.
Hall: We estimated it would have taken about 500,000 acres of Texas land. And that's a really high amount of some of the best farm land in this state up and down that corridor. And that was problematic. We thought they should have at least talked about existing rights of way.
Opposition to the Trans-Texas Corridor is one reason the Farm Bureau's political action committee this week announced it's supporting Kay Bailey Hutchison for Governor instead of Perry.
Hall says the state's cancellation of contracts for building and operating the corridor toll road will make it difficult to revive the project, but not impossible.
Hall says opponents like the Farm Bureau also want legislators to eliminate the statutes that created the corridor.