Trans-Texas Corridor dead?

Single projects to replace it

David Crossley, Jan 07, 09.

“The Trans-Texas Corridor, as a single project concept, is not the choice of Texans. So we’ve decided to put the name to rest,” says Amadeo Saenz, executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), in prepared remarks yesterday on the TxDOT website. Saenz made the announcement public at the Fourth Annual Texas Transportation Forum in Austin on January 6, 2009. “To be clear: the Trans-Texas Corridor as it was known will no longer exist,” he said.

Saenz told the Forum “we are unveiling a new corridor program that makes use of all the innovative project development tools we have. This new plan, called Innovative Connectivity in Texas/Vision 2009 will usher in this new method of operation.”

The Trans-Texas Corridor concept has “diminished,” Saenz said, and a new plan is in its place. “A plan that calls for corridor widths to be limited to 600 feet. A plan where the corridor modes, locations and sizes will depend heavily on guidance from Corridor Advisory Committees and Corridor Segment Committees. A plan that will consider improving existing transportation resources, whenever possible, rather than breaking new ground.”

A road by any other name…
A report in the Austin American-Statesman said that, although Saenz pronounced “The days of the Trans-Texas Corridor are over,” Governor Rick Perry, speaking to reporters from Iraq where he had gone on a brief visit to Texas troops there, added that “we really don’t care what name they attach to building infrastructure in the state of Texas. They key is we have to go forward and build it.”

Indeed, some questioned whether the plan is really dead, or just re-branded and calmed down a little. Christof Spieler, of the Citizens Transportation Coalition in Houston, http://houstontomorrow.org/images/uploads/txdot-innovative.jpg class=“alignright” said in his blog Intermodality “So now we have a new program that we don’t really know the form or extent of, shaped by public input in a fashion that TxDOT has not specified.”

In a Houston Chronicle report, State Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, said she wants to make sure TxDOT is doing more than just changing the name of the project. “Is this an admission of error or a strategic maneuver to repackage?” she asked. “Unfortunately, there is a distrust of the department.”

Reuters: “Texas kills 50-year road building plan after outcry”
TxDOT’s Trans-Texas Corridor page with info about the new name
Saenz’s speech