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Perry Announces Plan to Accelerate Interstate 69Ambitious Transportation Corridor Will Create Jobs, Trade Opportunities HOUSTON - Gov. Rick Perry today announced an ambitious plan to partner with the private sector to develop an interstate-quality highway corridor with additional rail freight capacity that connects the Lower Rio Grande River Valley to I-37 and continues along the south and east portions of Texas from Corpus Christi through Houston all the way to northeast Texas. The visionary transportation project, TTC-69, will connect industrial hubs in South Texas and the Midwest. “When construction is complete, Texas will benefit from unprecedented trade opportunities, a faster,...

WESLACO, Texas - With federal funding for the I-69 superhighway from the Texas-Mexico border to Canada dead for now, Texas and other states are looking for another route to fund the corridor, a state transportation official said Tuesday. Mario Jorge of the Texas Department of Transportation sought to allay the concerns of the Rio Grande Valley Mobility Task Force, a group of elected officials and business leaders who lobby for funding for the highway - raised when Texas Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton said recently that "I-69 is dead in the state of Texas. The road fairy has been shot." "Yeah,...

The Texas Department of Transportation went on the offensive Friday to quash rumors that it was surveying land in Central Texas for the Trans-Texas Corridor or preparing to acquire property for the proposed tollway project. “We have taken this unusual means of releasing a special statement to assure the people of Bell and McLennan counties that this rumor is untrue,” the department said in a statement. Some local officials and corridor critics said they had encountered similar rumors, which they attributed to uneasy landowners who fear the state's plan to build a 1,200-foot-wide network of roads, railway and utility infrastructure...

The latest, proposed route of the I-69 "NAFTA Highway" is slightly different from previous expectations, with a major segment skipping Fort Bend County. The NAFTA Highway is a proposal to link Mexico, the U.S. and Canada through a major highway starting at Laredo and Matamoros and running through Port Huron, Mich. The highway proposal also includes a separate route connecting the main corridor to the Houston Ship Channel, and that will likely run through Fort Bend County. For years, local officials have speculated the main corridor of the highway would run through Fort Bend County in place of U.S. 59....

HOUSTON – For four generations, Clarence Friedrich's family has farmed the land in Fayette County, Texas. Like many Germans who settled the area in the 1800s, the family has an attachment to the land that runs deeper than corn or cattle. It's part of Mr. Friedrich's heritage, his story. But Texas is looking to the future, not the past, in developing a new transportation system that could slice up his 350 acres and countless farms like it. The colossal $184-billion project would interlace the state with 4,000 miles of tolls roads - up to a quarter mile wide in some...

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...

Gov. Rick Perry, in satellite interviews with TV stations around the state Monday, said the $184 billion Trans Texas Corridor project is the best solution to the growing congestion on Interstate 35, especially in urban areas."It will take that massive amount of congestion out of city centers," Perry said.Perry's Trans Texas Corridor Plan calls for a 4,000-mile network of transportation corridors that would crisscross the state with separate highway lanes for passenger vehicles and trucks, passenger rail, freight rain, commuter rail and dedicated utility zones for water, natural gas and broadband communications. Click Here For Interactive Map Of Proposed Corridor...

Texas transportation officials are expected to negotiate a plan this month that would launch the Trans-Texas Corridor, Gov. Rick Perry's grandiose vision of future transportation. The first planned route would run through Central Texas from Oklahoma to Mexico, and its first segment would be a four-lane toll road from Dallas to San Antonio. But officials in Houston and along the Gulf Coast are paying close attention. They're not alone. "The whole nation is watching Texas to see if we can pull it off," said Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Ric Williamson, Perry's appointee and go-to man for getting the corridor built....

Activists taking shots at the planned Trans Texas Corridor have found some legislators willing to take a stab at trimming the colossal super-highway and ensuring that state authorities control the toll rates. Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, who sits on the appropriations committee and is vice chairman of the House Rural Caucus, said she filed House Bill 1273 in an attempt to balance the huge scope of the corridor with grass-root concerns. "My goal is to better the concept," she said. "I will be very saddened for Texas if we don't have some assurances in place." Kolkhorst was joined by co-authors...

Start all over with the Trans Texas Corridor. And let the legislature oversee future highway planning. That was the gist of the testimony delivered by TFB State Director Albert Thompson on behalf of the Texas Farm Bureau during a recent Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security hearing on the massive transportation project. "...it appears to us that the legislature has given the Texas Department of Transportation what amounts to a blank check worth approximately $180 billion," Thompson said on Feb. 9. "We would feel more comfortable if citizens had the opportunity to voice opinions with elected officials who should...

The Texas Department of Transportation held one of its 27 public meetings at NT's Gateway Center Wednesday, concerning the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor, a highway that will run from Oklahoma to Mexico. The highway is estimated to cover an area approximately 800 miles long and will include 77 counties. The Trans-Texas Corridor is a long-term project. Its estimated completion date will not be for another 30 to 60 years. The corridor will come with a price tag of somewhere between $145.2 billion and $183.2 billion. Paying for the highway was one of the major concerns addressed at the meeting. Obtaining funds...