Free Republic

AUSTIN - In what sounds like another tall tale told by a Texan, the Lone Star State has embarked on an audacious project to build superhighways so big, so complex, that they will make ordinary interstates look like cow paths. The Trans-Texas Corridor project, as envisioned by Republican Gov. Rick Perry in 2002, would be a 4,000-mile transportation network costing $175 billion over 50 years, financed mostly if not entirely with private money. The builders would charge motorists tolls. But these would not be mere highways. They would be megahighways -- corridors up to a quarter-mile across, consisting of as...

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...