Free Republic

Listen to proponents, and the Trans Texas Corridor sounds like the greatest thing since sliced bread. Talk to opponents, however—including many rural Texans—and that sliced bread has turned stale and moldy, way past the time it needs thrown out. Proponents say the Trans Texas Corridor will allow for much faster and safer transportation of people and freight. It will relieve Texas' congested roadways, fed by Texas' booming population—21 million residents today projected to rise to 50 million over the next few decades—and the exchange of goods with Mexico that has been accelerated since 1994 by the North American Free Trade...

A company selected to build a toll road from Dallas-Fort Worth to San Antonio has a reputation for aggressively collecting money from motorists, treating customers poorly and frequently raising tolls without public input. Those are among the complaints lodged against Cintra -- selected in December to build the first leg of the Trans-Texas Corridor -- by motorists on the company's toll roads in Toronto and Chicago. Across North America, private companies such as Cintra are spending billions of dollars to build roads in exchange for the right to collect tolls for 50 to 100 years -- relieving taxpayers of the...