Unable to ignore the 28,000 Texans
who complained about the
650-mile Trans-Texas
Corridor, which is slated to cut through east Texas on its
route from Mexico to Louisiana, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT)
has agreed to improve existing highways, not build new ones, to
construct the
TTC.
This is a change from TxDOT's plan to
use eminent domain,
the state's legal ability to acquire land for public-works projects,
regardless
of whether or not the owner wants to sell. The citizens, farmers and
small
businesses who would have been uprooted by this plan expressed their
opposition
in meetings held this winter and spring along the proposed route.
The primary
highway improved will be US-59, which will be
brought up to interstate standard, according to TxDOT spokesperson Mark
Cross.
In aMarch 19, 2008,
letter that was released to the public, U.S. Senator Kay Bailey
Hutchison
expressed her opposition to using eminent domain to construct the
highway. She
applauded TxDOT's recent decision, saying, “By using existing
right-of-way,
TxDOT will more efficiently utilize taxpayer dollars while also
limiting the
negative impact on farm land and businesses.”
With a change
in the route comes new problems, however.
Citizens have called for a new environmental survey and many are
worried that
tolls will accompany the new project.
"The rural
areas don't have enough traffic to be toll
viable," Terri Hall, founder and executive director of the non-profit
group Texans Uniting
for Reform and Freedom, said, which she speculates will
lead to tolls on existing roads in more urban areas. Tollingroads that have already
been paid for through
taxes is a double tax, Hall said.
Hall predicted
that TxDOT will use sleight of hand to do
this by turning existing freeways into access roads, with traffic
signals and slower
speed limits, and tolling the new freeways built in their place.
Cross denied
the allegations that existing roads would be
tolled or relegated to access roads. "The only thing that could
possibly
be tolled would be additional new lanes that could be built" Cross
said.
"We would not take away the free, main-lane access."
Cross said
that now that the route has been settled, TxDOT
can narrow its environmental-study plan, simply refining the studies
already
completed. He predicts that this will be completed by spring 2009.
But Hall says
TxDOT is legally obligated to start its entire
environmental-study process over however, which would include public
hearings
and surveys. Hall says that she has spoken to three experts on the
National
Environmental Policy Act, all of whom said that TxDOT is legally
obligated to
start over.
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