By Shelley Kofler, KERA News
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-864511.mp3
Dallas, TX –
State transportation officials today announced they're ending the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor project. KERA's Shelley Kofler reports expansion along Interstate 35 will continue, but without the grand plan.
Texas Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton choked down a helping of humble pie as he blamed his agency for the public backlash that's cancelling the Trans-Texas Corridor.
Houghton: we didn't do a very good job of explaining the Trans-Texas corridor. We are not very good marketers at the Texas Department of Transportation. We've learned the hard way and I have the scars to prove it.
Opponents of the state-wide transportation network publicly fought the project from the time Governor Rick Perry proposed it in 2002. Rural Texans said their property would be wiped out by the broad super-corridors needed for passenger lanes; commercial trucks; rail lines and utilities. Property owners most objected to the project's center piece, a 600- mile toll road from Oklahoma to Mexico that would parallel the often gridlocked I-35.
The Texas Farm Bureau's Gene Hall was among the critics.
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.
After spending at least $15 million on planning and studies transportation officials say they're now responding to the public. They've asked federal highway authorities for permission to shut the project down, something they expect to get. The state is ending contracts with developers.
But the transportation department's executive director Amadeo Saenz says some of the I-35 work will continue.
Saenz: When we first introduced the project we said we were going to expand Interstate 35 to six lanes from San Antonio to the Y in Hillsboro. That commitment still stands today.
Saenz says TxDOT will now chose additional road expansion projects after hearing from the public. His agency has learned the hard way what happens when they act first and listen later.