Category: General

NE Partnership, small city mayors, against current toll proposals

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Link to article here. These comments by the Northeast Mayors will be interpreted by TxDOT as an endorsement of the toll roads. TxDOT always claims they’re NOT tolling existing roads, yet every single toll lane in the plans for 281/1604 will toll existing lanes/right of way that we drive on today, toll-free. Not even half of the toll roads on 281/1604 have adjacent non-toll expressway lanes, which the mayors said they may support (only about 12 miles of the 47 miles of toll lanes will have a non-toll expressway option). The rest of the project area will only have frontage roads as the non-toll option, clearly NOT an expressway and it can be easily slowed with stoplights.

When I questioned many of the Mayors after the meeting at Retama, they all opposed tolling any existing lanes or right of way already paid for once by the taxpayers indicating they oppose the current toll projects as proposed. Their comments certainly don’t qualify as a ringing endorsement of the plans to toll existing FREEways all over Texas. The MOST CRITICAL factor to these smaller cities will be the non-compete clauses in the toll roads which will prohibit expansion of any free roads surrounding the tollways. This could bring their cities to a state of gridlock for the next 30 years! TxDOT is keeping any non-compete provisions SECRET, yet they’re asking the MPO, which is being kept in the dark, to cast a final vote to approve the toll projects.

Councilman Weeper is rather disingenuous saying he hasn’t received a peep in opposition to the toll roads only 400 in favor. We helped publicize the highway lobby’s stealth campaign to lobby for approval of the toll plans. The plan was hatched in a closed-door meeting at Valero October 19. Expressions of support from those who will financially benefit from the toll roads is hardly a legitimate indicator of public support! It’s an obvious conflict of interest! Weeper has since received over 900 emails in opposition to toll roads…in case the 2,000+ who turned out in opposition at the public hearings weren’t sufficient!

Opposition to toll roads grows in NE Partnership
November 20, 2007
By Edmond Ortiz
Staff Writer
The Herald – News

The Northeast Partnership for Economic Development is providing its input on toll roads. Judging from comments made by attending elected officials at the partnership’s Nov. 8 meeting at Retama Park, the coalition of Metrocom and Seguin leaders is inclined not to join the toll road bandwagon.

The transportation policy board of the San Antonio-Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Organization will vote Dec. 3 on the toll equity plan that is being developed by the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority.

The equity plan contains financing terms for planned toll road projects that would cover Loop 1604 from Interstate 10 to Texas 151, and U.S. 281 from 1604 to the Comal County line.

Some Metrocom cities had no representation at the Northeast Partnership’s luncheon, but top officials who were there said they and their constituents see toll roads as double taxation.

“I’ve seen over 400 emails in support of the 281 toll, none in opposition. Since I represent over 334,000 residents on the MPO, I felt it’s my duty to encourage citizens to vote their desires,” said Selma City Councilman William Weeper, the partnership’s representative with the planning organization.

Selma Mayor Jim Parma, who chairs the partnership, asked for a roll call of attending mayors to arrive at a consensus. Parma, Al Suarez of Converse, Henry Edwards of Live Oak, Joe Medinger of Universal City and Jay Feibelman of Garden Ridge all expressed concerns with the idea of toll roads.

“I’d support tolls except for any existing roads taxpayers have already paid for,” Feibelman said. “If you want to build two extra lanes on one side of 1604 and two other lanes on the other side and if I have a choice between those toll lanes and the free highway, that’s fine.”

“I’ve heard from some constituents. The Live Oak City Council will consider this issue later, but I can’t see paying for roads twice,” Edwards said.

“I don’t like the concept of toll roads, but I’m with Mayor Feibelman. If I have a choice between those and free highway, that’s good,” Parma said.

“We need to keep free access to certain roads, but you know it’s natural. The minute a freeway opens, it’s clogged,” Medinger said. The Universal City mayor touted methods of alternate travel to help alleviate vehicular/passenger transit such as using mass transportation.

“When I go to meetings in downtown (San Antonio), I take VIA so I don’t hassle with gas or parking. It’s just part of the bigger solution,” he added.

Bexar County Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Adkis-son reiterated his general opposition to toll roads.

“I’ll continue to insist we see the best possible proposal,” Adkisson added.

Hollywood Park & local cities have power to stop toll projects

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Margaret Byfield of Stewards of the Range is an expert in using local government to fend off overreaching and overbearing state and federal government. Local government coordination is at the fingertips of ANY local unit of government willing to flex its muscles. For all the cries for local control, this one is a sure-fire way to make it happen….it’s the LAW!

Link to article here.

Could Hollywood Park stop the 281 North toll road project?
North Central News
November 19, 2007

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San Antonio Toll Party and Texans United for Reform and Freedom Founder and President Terri Hal addresses the Hollywood Park City Council. Photo by Eva Ruth Moravec

By Eva Ruth Moravec
Staff WriterSome citizens following toll roads issue have recently claimed, and to some extent proven, that individual cities and groups of cities can stop toll road projects that affect them by demanding to be involved in the process.

The town of Hollywood Park could be the next to try.

“I thought it would be a good idea for her to come out,” said Hollywood Park Mayor Richard McIlveen at a recent city council meeting where he introduced SA Toll Party and Texans United for Reform and Freedom Founder and President Terri Hall. “We need to start thinking ahead.”

Hall attended the meeting at the urging of TURF’s Treasurer, Hollywood Park resident Sudie Sartor.

According to Hall’s presentation, a city—specifically, Hollywood Park—affected by the toll road—specifically, the U.S. Highway 281 North toll road project—could effectively tattle on the Texas Department of Transportation to the federal government and stop the toll process here dead in its tracks.

TxDOT should have included Hollywood Park in its long-completed environmental assessment, Hall said, since the city will likely experience more cut-through traffic, an increase in accidents and lower sales taxes and property taxes.

Moreover, the Texas Statutes Local Government Code, which all local governments follow, encourages coordination and thus provides local governments with armory to attack TxDOT, Hall said.

“If you demand coordination, that will require another study, and that will stop the toll project,” she said. “We have got to stop this now. It really just adds up to more economic damage.”

McIlveen said he isn’t sure what the city council will do with Hall’s information. She advised the body and citizens to write a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which approves environmental assessments on projects like the U.S. 281 toll project, and “include what you thought was inadequate,” said Hall.

“We need to get the city attorney’s interpretation,” McIlveen said. “Obviously, the residents can do whatever they want, but we have to run it through our legal department.”

TxDOT Spokeswoman Laura Lopez said since the project only required an environmental assessment, and not an environmental impact statement, then the coordination clause doesn’t hold true.

“This far in the process, it can’t be stopped that way,” she said.

Stewards of the Range, a group dedicated to legislation on private property rights in America, has determined that the “coordination clause” is valid no matter what the study’s name is.

“The law is really clear, it says that they have to coordinate with the local government,” said Margaret Byfield, Executive Director for Stewards of the Range. “The National Environmental Policy Act is what mandates how environmental assessments and impact statements are done, and that statute says they have to coordinate.”

Byfield’s group has been involved with the city of Bartlett and others’ efforts to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor. Bartlett and others have used the “coordination clause” to stop TxDOT there and demand to be a partner by forming a commission. However, Lopez said the TTC 1-35 project is undergoing an environmental impact statement process, not environmental assessment process.

Moreover, Lopez said Hollywood Park was invited to be involved in the process through quadrant meetings and stakeholder meetings, but added that the city won’t feel impacts from the toll road project that ends at the northern border of the city, Loop 1604.

“They [Hollywood Park] should not be affected by it at all. The purpose of adding capacity is to add more lanes for drivers not to have to go through any shortcuts,” she said, “so there should be no impact whatsoever.”

Hollywood Park already experiences cut-through traffic by drivers who want to avoid the U.S. 281/Loop 1604 interchange. After Hall spoke, council discussed ways to limit cut-through traffic in the city, as a separate agenda item. Further action will be taken in the future.

To solve the interchange issue, the toll road plan will include ramps that will directly connect the two roads, but the ramps won’t be built for years after the toll project begins, and will be tolled.

Byfield said that the skepticism about Hall’s plan is because “local governments haven’t really understood how involved they should be in the process, and TxDOT’s not real happy that some of the local governments are realizing this. They’re going to try to avoid it to the best of their ability.”

The Alamo Regional Mobility Authority is finalizing plans for the 281 North Toll Road project and will seek funding from the Metropolitan Planning Organization on Dec. 3. After that, three bidding teams will prepare entries for the project, and a winner will be selected next spring.

ARMA Spokesman Leroy Alloway said that his organization invited Hollywood Park council members to public meetings and that they were given the opportunity to be involved.

McIlveen said he wasn’t sure if an action item on the subject would be on the agenda for the next council meeting, scheduled for Dec. 18.

Crude oil crisis, peak oil is here

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For years, the BIG energy industry giants pooh-poohed claims of the coming peak oil phenomenon and chalked it up to environmental alarmists stirring the pot against BIG oil. Now the Houston Chronicle, Bloomberg, Time, and the Dallas Morning News are all on the same peak oil page and the price of gas isn’t lookin’ good for the foreseeable future. Now is NOT the time for ubiquitous, ghastly expensive and unsustainable toll projects.

Crude crunch coming
Industry wisdom now recognizes there are practical limits to the world’s oil supply
Houston Chronicle
Nov. 20, 2007
The closing price of crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange Tuesday set a record, climbing to three cents above $98 a barrel. Market analysts said speculation that the Federal Reserve Board would lower interest rates a third time this year contributed to a drop in the dollar. The drooping dollar, in turn, made energy futures more attractive to investors as a hedge against inflation.

Another contributing factor was Royal Dutch Shell’s report that a tar sands plant in Alberta caught fire Monday. The downed processor could reduce shipments of crude to U.S. refiners.

However, underlying daily developments in the financial markets is a structural limit on supply in a world in which demand for oil is rising. On Nov. 14, the Chronicle stated in an editorial that $100 oil and an energy crunch were inevitable because the supply of crude was vulnerable to weather, shortages of skilled workers, production bottlenecks, political instability and terrorism.

Monday, in a front-page article, The Wall Street Journal reported that many Western oil industry executives have come round to that view. After years of discounting predictions of peak oil production, these industry leaders and some officials of oil producing nations now say oil production will plateau during or before 2012.

According to the Journal, ConocoPhillips chief executive James Mulva told a Wall Street conference, “I don’t think we are going to see the supply going over 100 million barrels a day. … Where is all that going to come from?”

Christophe de Margerie, the Journal reported, head of the French oil company Total, was even less optimistic, saying that daily production in 2030 of even 100 million barrels would be difficult.

Production will reach its limit, current industry wisdom suggests, not because there is insufficient oil in the ground, but because of structural deficits in production, including restricted oil industry access to foreign and offshore reserves and insufficient investment in fields in Iran and Venezuela, both headed by presidents more intent on making trouble for the United States and its allies than in maximizing global supplies of crude oil.

Iraq has huge untapped oil reserves, but lack of security keeps away needed investment. And production of oil from tar sands has proved to be slower and more difficult than first envisioned.

Investment banker Matt Simmons of Houston, a leading proponent of the peak oil theory, notes that discoveries of large oil fields have become rare and that smaller discoveries just won’t provide adequate reserves to meet growing demand.

In the face of restricted supply and higher prices, Americans are driving more than ever. This suggests that the market will bear much higher prices at the pump.

Market theory predicts that higher prices will encourage development of supply. This time, the dictators who control much of the world’s oil reserves have so much money coming in and so little concern for others that they lack the usual motivation to produce.

No wonder Western energy executives are beginning to worry that demand will soon outpace supply.

Letters to Editor on tolls: Listen to the PEOPLE!

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In the Express-News, November 27, 2007 – Listen to the majority

It may be my age, but I’m totally bewildered that it is no longer possible in this country for the will of the majority to be even heard, much less considered.

It seems that the only majority that matters is that of our illustrious lawmakers and what they want (and stand to gain from?).

It would also seem that the majority of people are against illegal immigration, toll roads, the so-called “death tax,” the Trans-Texas Corridor and many other issues that politicians promise to fix every campaign until they are elected and become part of the problem.

I really admire and support attorney David Van Os and anti-toll road activist Terri Hall, who are at least trying to bring some accountability into this process.

Toll roads are proposed and supported by those who have the most to gain — financially, that is — from them. It doesn’t seem to matter that the rest of us will be paying the price for their gain for the rest of our lives.

Maybe it’s time for another Boston Tea Party revolt!

Becky Narvarte

Dominion over tolls

If the Texas Department of Transportation is bound and determined to build some toll roads, why doesn’t it build them at all the entrances and exits to The Dominion?

Twenty bucks a car should do it, since the Dominionites are the only ones who can afford toll roads anyway.

Albert Smith

Tolling Authority jet sets to Austria on YOUR DIME!

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Watch this undercover news report from Bennett Cunningham with CBS-TV in Dallas!

Thank Mr. Cunningham and CBS for their report here.

As the North Texas Toll Authority (NTTA) was raising toll rates and shifting and EXISTING HIGHWAY, Hwy 121 into a tollway, 5 of their employees headed to Vienna, Austria for a taxpayer-funded junket racking up more than $7,000 a HEAD on airfare alone! They repeatedly played hookey during the toll road convention and spent one of the days sight-seeing in neighboring Slovakia. In total, this little jaunt cost the taxpayers over $42,000! No wonder we have “no money” for roads…

Demand accountability! Contact your state representative and senator and ask that these employees be FIRED immediately!

These UNELECTED, UNACCOUNTABLE toll authority members have become a monopolistic taxing entity. Now they inexplicably waste our hard-earned cash jet setting around Europe while you struggle to fill your gas tank and pay tolls just to get to work! Remember that these same folks also get a FREE PASS on the toll roads in North Texas. Read it here.

Bin Laden, Chavez, Ahmadinejad team-up to collapse dollar, kill U.S. economy

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With Americans facing volatile oil markets, an unstable housing market, and a shaky credit crunch, now they have to contend with the free fall of the U.S. dollar. Jerry Corsi, in his book, The Late Great USA, warns that the Trans Texas Corridor and intercontinental trade corridor crowd pushing the merger of the United States with Canada and Mexico into a North American Union need a currency crisis to make way for a single North American currency called the Amero.

Still think NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, and all the other free trade agreements are a good idea? Anyone think dependence on foreign oil ought to continue? Are we tired of being puppets for our enemies and the global elites who want to erase our borders, our sovereignty, and threaten our economy and even our security? The only truly anti-globalist Presidential candidates are Dennis Kucinich, Duncan Hunter, and Ron Paul. Ron Paul seems to have the momentum and also the grassroots support to take out the pre-ordained globalist picks for the top job.
Link to article here.
BLACK-GOLD BLUES
Chavez, Ahmadinejad join bin Laden’s jihad on dollar
Leaders urge OPEC members to declare economic war against U.S. ‘imperialism’

Posted: November 19, 2007
3:10 p.m. Eastern

By Jerome R. Corsi
 © 2007 WorldNetDaily.com


Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iran and Venezuela have declared war on the U.S dollar following al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s call for a jihad on the American currency. At this past weekend’s OPEC summit in Saudi Arabia, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged members to move away from the dollar as the currency of choice for foreign-exchange reserves resulting from oil sales.

Calling the dollar a “worthless piece of paper,” Ahmadinejad told the OPEC summit that a “credible hard currency” other than the dollar should be found.

Chavez, in his concluding speech at the summit, called for OPEC to use oil to fight U.S. imperialism, arguing “the empire of the dollar has to end.”

Ahmadinejad’s call for a basket of currencies for trading oil first surfaced over the weekend, after a closed OPEC members-only meeting was inadvertently shown on a TV monitor in the media center.

The call for an oil jihad against the dollar was first issued by bin Laden in his “Letter to the American People,” published by the London Guardian Nov. 24, 2002.

Bin Laden wrote, “You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the highest theft ever witnessed in the history of the world.”

He declared, “Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy.”

At the Riyadh summit, Chavez told the group the price of oil could reach $150, or as high as $200 a barrel, “if the United States is crazy enough to attack Iran.”

Ahmadinejad argued that oil was under-priced at $100 a barrel, contending higher prices on world markets would be fair to oil-producing countries such as Iran.

Saudi Arabia, a strong U.S. ally, was reluctant to take political advantage of OPEC’s oil-producing strength, arguing the cartel has always acted “moderately and wisely.”

According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, Chavez stopped off in Tehran today for direct talks with Ahmadinejad before returning home from the summit.

During the meeting, Chavez reported the two nations have signed 186 agreements, including a proposal to form a joint bank and create a joint fund for industrial projects. Bilateral trade between Iran and Venezuela has reached $4.6 billion annually.

According to IRNA, Chavez said “the value of dollars on global markets is declining, and we will witness the fall of the dollar in the future.”

IRNA also reported Ahmadinejad’s statement that Venezuela and Iran are in full support of each other.

In February 2006, WND reported, Iran was on a course to declare a jihad on the dollar, calling for the creation of an Iranian oil bourse organized to quote oil in euros, instead of dollars.

To date, Iran has yet to follow through with the actual creation of an oil bourse.

In the same month, WND reported Venezuela declared a policy of moving the country’s foreign-exchange holdings out of the dollar and into the euro.

At that time, Chavez called for the creation of a South American central bank designed to hold in euros all the foreign-exchange holdings of the participating countries.

In February, WND reported an announcement by Ehrabhim Sheibany, governor of Iran’s central bank, that about 60 percent of Iran’s oil income is collected in non-dollar currencies, affirming Iran’s decision to end all oil sales in dollars.

According to the Associated Press, the dollar has lost 11 percent of its value against the euro since the start of this year.

In December 2006, WND first reported a warning of the possibility of a dollar collapse.

In January came warnings that the fall of the dollar in world currency markets that began in 2006 would accelerate this year.

WND reported last week that with oil at over $90 a barrel, the U.S. has begun spending $1 billion a day for foreign oil, an outflow of dollars that both deepens the country’s negative balance of international trade and further weakens the dollar on world currency markets.

TURF seeks injunction, alleges MPO a “front” for toll road builders, operating outside Constitution

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See news coverage (more here.)

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MPO a “front” for toll road builders
TURF files injunction to stop MPO’s Dec 3 vote to approve toll rates

San Antonio, TX, Monday, November 19, 2007 – From the steps of the John Wood U.S. Federal District Court in Bexar County, TURF announced its motion seeking an injunction against the San Antonio Metropolitan Planning Organization (SAMPO) for violating the citizens Constitutional rights (in the First and 14th amendments) and hijacking the Board to benefit road contractors.

“By filing this injunction today, we hope to put transportation decisions back in the hands of the people,” said Terri Hall, Founder/Director of the grassroots group TURF.

TURF is asking the court to intervene before December 3 where SAMPO is to vote to approve the financial terms (toll rates and rate increases) for the US 281 toll project as well as to shift yet more tax money to building toll lanes on EXISTING corridors, amounting to a TRIPLE TAX (once for what’s already there, a second for building the toll lanes, and a third toll tax).

TxDOT is keeping vital financial information on the 281 toll project SECRET ahead of the MPO’s vote to approve the financial terms. Board members are being asked to vote on information that has NOT been disclosed, including whether or not a non-compete agreement will prevent free roads surrounding the 281 toll lanes from being expanded.

MPO Board members State Representative David Leibowitz and Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson submitted affidavits (see links below) to the court with ample evidence to prove the MPO has violated the First Amendment and 14th Amendment as it relates to citizens opposed to toll roads.

TURF attorney David Van Os described the actions of the MPO this way: “The self-serving business interests that will reap huge profits off toll roads are manipulating the processes of the MPO to stack the deck against those opposed to tolls. They’re keeping their voices from even being heard which violates their Constitutional rights.”

Adkisson, who has been prevented from representing his constituents’ opposition to toll roads by the MPO’s bullying tactics used Thomas Paine’s words to describe the corrupt practices at the MPO, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it the superficial appearance of being right.”

He went on to object to unelected members of the MPO serving on the Board which, in effect, dilutes the votes of elected officials. “Unelected members aren’t accountable at the ballot box,” said Adkisson.

The injunction seeks to halt all activity of the SAMPO Board until it’s reconfigured to have only elected officials with voting powers. TURF’s lawsuit against the SAMPO was originally filed on October 22 and TURF is now seeking an injunction as the next step in that lawsuit to force the unconstitutional composition of SAMPO to be re-configured to have only elected officials with voting powers.

SAMPO allocates tax dollars to transportation projects in Bexar County and approves toll rates and toll projects. The lawsuit alleges that the composition of the SAMPO Board is unconstitutional and Chairwoman Sheila McNeil has been a party to denying the First Amendment right of free speech to the constituents of elected MPO Board members like State Representative David Leibowitz by blocking an agenda item and any debate on an issue brought up at his request (see on YouTube here read about it in his affidavit, link below).

TURF recently scored a victory in STATE COURT in a different lawsuit against members of the Texas Transportation Department and Transportation Commission.

Read TURF’s motion for preliminary injunction here.
Links to affidavits below:

State Representative David Leibowitz

Commissioner Tommy Adkisson

TURF Founder Terri Hall

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Trans Texas Corridor I-69 to takeover EXISTING highway in DOUBLE TAX scheme

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Link to article here. Note how the Trans Texas Corridor I-69 project has hijacked a long promised INTERSTATE highway project and turned it into Rick Perry’s Trans Texas Corridor that will now gobble up existing state highway 59 and turn it into a DOUBLE TAX scheme to fleece already wounded motorists facing unabated gas price hikes.

Planners narrow proposed I-69 corridor
New road would largely follow the U.S. 59 footprint across the state
By RAD SALLEE
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Nov. 15, 2007

READ THE REPORT
The draft environmental impact statement can be accessed here.State highway officials have sharply narrowed the possible route of the Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor, saying they plan to keep it close to U.S. 59 and other existing roads.

The news comes after months of criticism that the planned corridor and its sister project, TTC-35 in Central Texas, could divide farms and ranches and suck motorists’ dollars from nearby towns to the projects’ developers.

It also comes after the Texas Legislature restricted the Texas Department of Transportation’s ability to expand the use of tolls and privatization to pay for new roads.

The revised study area is shown in the federally required Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the I-69/TTC project, a hefty document made public earlier this week.

Through most of its 650 miles from Texarkana to the Mexico border, the corridor under study initially ranged from 20 to 80 miles wide. It has been reduced in the DEIS to between a quarter mile and four miles wide.

The proposed route follows U.S. 59 from Texarkana to Victoria, except through Houston, then splits off to Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley on U.S. 77, U.S. 281 and Texas 44.

A bypass — TxDOT uses the term “relief route” — would skirt west of the Houston area.

Because the corridor’s role is to connect urban areas rather than go through their hearts, the identified route generally avoids areas that are built up or expected to grow rapidly.

However, spurs would extend to the Port of Houston from the north and west. Bypasses also are likely around several smaller cities.

Another spur is shown branching off from north of Nacogdoches to the Louisiana state line. Although the Trans-Texas Corridor would stop there, the envisioned Interstate 69 would continue northeast to Detroit and Canada, for a total length of 2,700 miles border to border.

An east-west connection between the Gulf port of Corpus Christi and the inland port of Laredo also is planned, said project spokeswoman Gabriela Garcia of TxDOT.

“One thing we have heard from everybody over several years is to focus on existing corridors and see how we can incorporate them into the project,” Garcia said.

Room for toll lanes

Texas Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton described U.S. 59 as a four-lane divided highway with “a beautiful nice, wide median” where toll lanes dedicated to trucks or cars could be built. In some places, he said, the footprint might need to be widened.Garcia said the corridor would be “demand-driven” and built in pieces as needed. A TxDOT official also said toll rates and the roadway could vary between segments depending on traffic load and local preferences.

In spring 2008, Houghton said, TxDOT will set up working groups for specific segments of the route “to advise us on what they would like to have.”

A separate group would represent ports and another working group for the overall project.

“Each region has its own significant issues,” Houghton said.

For instance, he said, “Victoria County has said they want dedicated truck lanes and they are going out to buy right of way.”

Residents of the Brazos Valley want an interstate highway to Bryan-College Station, Houghton said. The proposed route west of Houston would pass through Grimes and Walker counties nearby.

For years, towns and cities along U.S. 59 in East and South Texas have sought to have the busy highway upgraded to I-69. After 2002, when Gov. Rick Perry announced his goal of building the Trans-Texas Corridor — a statewide network of roads and rails, pipelines and power lines — the I-69 idea was folded into corridor plans.

But there were changes that troubled longtime supporters: The road would be tolled, probably built and managed privately, and may end up too far from towns for local businesses to attract motorists.

David Stall of Corridor Watch, a citizens group opposed to the corridor concept, said the decision to build close to U.S. 59 or on it is a partial victory.

“I think the state is learning very slowly,” Stall said. “Those are huge shifts in direction.”

Also pleased was Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation, which advocates tolls and other means of stretching tax dollars for needed highways.

“Using existing right-of-ways means highways can potentially be built faster, more cost effectively and with less impact on property owners,” said spokesman Bill Noble in a statement.

Uncontrolled access
It was not clear how the broad corridors that Perry envisioned could be built alongside U.S. 59 in East Texas, where numerous small towns line the highway and there is uncontrolled access from dozens of streets, parking lots and driveways.In those places, said TxDOT deputy executive director Steve Simmons, “We might have to rebuild the facility so that the existing lanes become more like frontage roads.”

Stall said adding lanes to U.S. 59 would be easier in the less populous stretch from the Houston area to Mexico.

“We are talking about something along the model of the interstate system, and the Rio Grande Valley and Polk County have been clamoring for that for years,” he said.

Work on the DEIS began in 2004, and it could take at least as long to complete the second phase of environmental studies to determine a detailed route, Garcia said.

She said the process will begin in January with 10 town hall meetings, dates and places to be announced, followed by 46 public hearings in February throughout the corridor.

Special interests like TTC 69; taxpayers don't

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Link to article here.

You gotta ask what kind of reporter is this? Do your homework! Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation is Joe Krier and Red McCombs’ group pushing this stuff on behalf of road profiteers. How is the passage of Prop 12 an endorsement of tolling existing highways or the Trans Texas Corridor neither of which is mentioned in the amendment? This reads like a press release from TxDOT…Cornyn’s head is officially on the chopping block. The second article shows the opposition is already gathering steam. This road was promised as a FREE interstate, now it’s going to be built as a massive tolled trade corridor, likely in the hands of a foreign company. Another bait and switch…

Transportation group applauds TxDOT’s I-69/TTC announcement
By GARY WILLMON
The Lufkin Daily News
November 14, 2007
Transportation advocacy groups are applauding Tuesday’s announcement of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement released by the Texas Department of Transportation on the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor highway project and agree with TxDOT officials that using existing road rights of way whenever possible in planning the corridor is the best idea.

“Using existing rights of way means highways can potentially be built faster, more cost effectively and with less impact on property owners,” said Bill Noble, spokesman for Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation, a statewide transportation group. “By first considering building along existing roadways, TxDOT will provide better mobility and emergency evacuation for south and east Texas.”

TxDOT also announced public hearings on the I-69/TTC project are to begin in January 2008.

“Public involvement is essential to the planning and design process,” Noble said. “We believe there is strong public support for the TTC-69 in the counties where the highway could be located.”

In last week’s statewide constitutional amendment elections, a majority of voters in counties along the proposed I-69/TTC route voted in favor of Proposition 12, authorizing up to $5 billion in state general obligation bonds for transportation improvements. Specifically, 39 of the 44 proposed counties where the highway project could be located passed Proposition 12 by greater than 50 percent, according to election data from the Texas Secretary of State’s Web site. Only five counties fell below 50 percent.

Angelina County voters passed the proposition with a 66 percent yes vote.

“The population is expected to grow 65 percent within the next 25 years while road usage is projected to increase 214 percent,” said Ted Houghton, a member of the Texas Transportation Commission, at Tuesday’s TxDOT press conference.

Noble said the radical shift in thinking toward meeting future transportation needs is a much-needed one. “Unless Texans change their approach to transportation, road capacity will grow by only 6 percent,” Noble said. “Experts would say that an expanded transportation system for Texas is not optional; it is a necessity.”

Texans for Safe Reliable Transportation is a 501(c)6 public education organization made up of Texas citizens, employers and transportation professionals dedicated to easing traffic gridlock and improving infrastructure to move people and products more efficiently. The group’s Web site is www.BetterTexasRoads.org.

Also on Tuesday, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) gave his endorsement of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement announcement. Cornyn, a member of the I-69 Caucus, said the transportation project will relieve congestion as well as boost the Texas economy.

“Progress on the impact statement brings us another step closer to Texas drivers being able to travel on this corridor,” Cornyn said in Tuesday’s statement. “It is encouraging to see the effort move forward, and I’ll continue working to improve transportation in Texas.”

_______________________________________

Valley Leaders, Toll Opponents, Blast New Corridor Plan
TexDOT plans 650 mile toll road from Valley to Texarkana
By Jim Forsyth, WOAI Radio
November 14, 2007

With controversy not abating over its existing toll road plans, the Texas Department of Transportation has announced plans for another massive toll project, the 650 mile ‘TTC/I-69’ road from Laredo, Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley to Texarkana, 1200 WOAI news reports today.

It is the second leg of the ambitious Trans Texas Corridor to be unveiled. Mark Cross of TexDOT says existing roads would be expanded wherever possible, instead of new roads being built.

“US 59 runs all the way from Texarkana to Laredo, so that’s the main portion of roadway we’ll be looking at,” Cross said.

TexDOT had previously unveiled plans to built TTC-35, which will run mainly east of the existing Interstate 35 from south of San Antonio to the Oklahoma border, and may include State Highway 130, which is currently under construction from Marion to Georgetown.

It is State Highway 130 that 1200 WOAI news reported exclusively more than a month ago that TexDOT has agreed to ‘consider’ cutting the speed limit on Interstate 35 to support. Speed limits on Trans Texas Corridor are allowed by state law to be as high as 85 miles an hour, which would be the highest posted speed limits in the world.

Already there is criticism for the TexDOT plan.

State Senator Eddie Lucio (D-Brownsville), a long time supporter of the “interstate 69” idea, says it’s ‘not fair’ that Rio Grande Valley residents would have to pay a toll to access an Interstate highway. The Valley is the largest area in the country in terms of population without access to a through Interstate highway.

“All the Interstates that were established in Texas, in Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, El Paso, Laredo, all those people can drive on the Interstate for free,” Lucio said. “Why should only people in the Valley have to pay a toll?”

Lucio says residents of the Rio Grande Valley pay just as much in gas tax as people everywhere else in Texas, and should not have to pay to use Interstate highways.

Cross says many environmental hearings are necessary and it will be ‘many years’ before final plans for TTC/I-69 are released.

Pro-toll bootlicker, Mike Krusee, to bolt for cushy job rather than face re-election!

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Link to news here. A BIG WIN for the voters…out you go! Rep. Mike Krusee was the House Transportation Chairman who blocked EVERY transportation bill that would have stopped toll roads, who has total contempt for the taxpayers, and after being the highway lobby’s biggest bootlicker for years, he gets to sit on the taxpayers’ payroll even longer…sickening!

Another Legislator To Move On Down The (Toll) Road
Veteran Williamson County Republican Mike Krusee will reportedly be appointed to a state transportation job before the end of the month, making him ineligible to continue serving in the Texas Legislature.

The Transportation Committee chief has been rumored to be on the retirement treadmill for months, ever since he delivered an emotional diatribe at the close of the legislative session in May that many Capitol observers said sounded like a farewell speech.

Round Rock school board vice president Diana Maldonado, a Democrat, has already announced her plans to run for the seat.

Posted on November 14, 2007 – 3:12 pm by APR