Free Republic

The Texas Department of Transportation is pulling the last plug on the Trans-Texas Corridor, Gov. Rick Perry's embattled plan to build a toll-road network across the state. The agency said earlier this year it was scaling down the project and dropping the name "Trans-Texas Corridor." Now, transportation officials say it's fully dead. Transportation Commissioner Bill Meadows told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of the decision in a report posted online Tuesday. The news comes a day after Perry's Republican primary opponent, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, secured the coveted endorsement of the powerful Texas Farm Bureau — a vocal opponent of the...

The Texas Department of Transportation is asking Nueces County residents to attend a public meeting in Driscoll to comment and provide input on proposed upgrades of US 77 to a controlled access facility that meets interstate standards. The purpose of the meetings is to review proposed options for upgrading US 77 and to present recommendations, TxDOT officials said. The first round public meetings were held in early March. This second round of public meetings is being held as part of TxDOT's continued effort to gain public input on issues related to proposed improvements and to provide an opportunity for public...

In my recent letter to you concerning the TTC, I misquoted some information about the company known as Cintra. Mr. Patrick Rhodes of Cintra wrote in response to my mistake. Therefore, I stand corrected with the following: Fellow citizens, the company, Cintra, is not affiliated with ZAI-ACS. Cintra is partnered with Zachry on some TxDOT projects and ACS is partnered with Zachry on some other TxDOT projects. Therefore, I hope this clarifies the over-zealous statements in my letter. Cintra is a Spanish-owned company, and ACS is a larger Spanish-owned company. Zachry, a Texas company, is affiliated with each of them...

TEXARKANA — The company selected to design Interstate 69 has revealed plans to also implement the world’s first air rail freight system in the corridor, possibly starting in Texarkana, Texas. “You [Texarkana ] have railroads here, you already have an interstate, bringing I-69 is another interstate, you’ve got Oklahoma, you’ve got I-49,” said Gary Kuhn, senior project manager for Zachary American Infrastructure. “This is what the logistics world likes to see — that opportunity to go from one mode to another very efficiently.” In a presentation to the Wilbur Smith Rotary Club, Kuhn said the freight shuttle is a new...

Lately I have heard from some of you, asking about the Corridor. Most folks believe it is over, dead, gone from our beautiful East Texas. I have been watching our government's actions on this subject. Did you know that in TxDOT's cover letter to the federal government it states they will only use existing highways to build their corridor? Did you know that TxDOT also stated that it may need to build in non-existing paths also, some time in the future. Citizens, I write you today to make sure you understand that the corridor issue in Trinity County has not...

The Texas Transportation Commission approves the staff recommendation for a proposal by Zachry American Infrastructure and ACS Infrastructure (ZAI/ACS) to develop the Texas portion of Interstate 69. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) selected the ZAI/ACS proposal over a proposal from Bluebonnet Infrastructure Investors. The proposed ZAI/ACS master plan would develop the southern section of U.S. Highway 77 to interstate standards without tolling that portion of the road. The proposal advances planning for I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC). The selection of ZAI/ACS for a development contract has no impact on TxDOT's environmental study that will determine the route for I-69/TTC. TxDOT will...

AUSTIN — The Texas Transportation Commission on Thursday selected San Antonio's Zachry Construction Corp. and a Spanish toll road developer to plan a superhighway from Texarkana to Brownsville. The $5 million contract calls for Zachry American Infrastructure and ACS Infrastructure to create a financial plan for the Interstate 69 segment of the Trans-Texas Corridor. "This team represents the best in the balance of local and global expertise necessary to complete a project of this scope," said David Zachry, chief operating officer of Zachry Construction Corp. The private developers' plan calls for seven new loops around Corpus Christi and other cities...

AUSTIN -- The second half of the massive Trans Texas Corridor will take a large step toward reality today, when state transportation officials award a $5 million design contract to a team of private toll road operators. The operators will develop a master plan for the portion of the project that will run from Northeast Texas to Houston and then to Mexico – about 650 miles. The contract will not directly authorize the winning consortium to build any part of the super highway. But it will give the winning bidder a position of power for winning the much larger construction...

A retreat from the Texas Department of Transportation's plan to build a new multi-lane toll road through East Texas is a clear victory for Angelina County and Diboll, local officials said last week. "I'm glad they went back to the original plan," Diboll Mayor Bill Brown said. Instead of a new Trans-Texas Corridor toll road paralleling U.S. 59, Tx- DOT now plans to widen 59 with a new bypass around Diboll and Lufkin. The planned 59 bypass, needed to avoid the signalized intersections in Diboll and Lufkin, provides in the original plan four exits for Diboll. That will be good...

Non-compete clauses for tollways would be a non-starter under a policy the Texas Transportation Commission will consider Thursday. Such language in toll road contracts, which generally prohibit a toll road owner (such as the Texas Department of Transportation) from building or expanding a nearby free road, or require compensation for doing so, have been controversial in Texas and elsewhere. TxDOT’s contract with Cintra-Zachry, a Spanish and American consortium that will build and operate a southern section of Texas 130, requires TxDOT to pay up if it makes certain highway improvements within 10 miles of the road. The commission Thursday will...

Earth Tech Inc. has been awarded a multi-million dollar contract to provide environmental services to Central Texas Highway Constructors, LLC (CTxHC). Earth Tech, the lead planning and engineering firm for Cintra Zachry, LP on the Trans-Texas Corridor 35 (TTC-35) project, was approved by CTxHC for environmental work on Segments 5 and 6 of the SH 130 highway project. The SH 130 project is the first facility to be developed under the TTC-35 Comprehensive Development Agreement. An integral part of the preparation for highway construction, the project includes site assessments, hazardous materials clean-ups, remediation, and other environmental services. A private-public partnership,...

Each day, I make the dreaded drive down Interstate 35 to go to work in Fort Worth. Each day, I slug through the snarl and sludge of ceaseless traffic, which intensifies my growing desire to commit hari-kari, or at least incites a vehement curse of the highway gods. Certainly, we in Texas need more lanes, more roads, more rails, more something to deal with the ever-expanding urban population and growing international commerce. Yet how do we solve our transportation needs without carving up the countryside like some congratulatory cake? Or should the construction of a superhighway-rail-utility corridor even concern us?...

Texas Farm Bureau offered several viable transportation and funding alternatives to the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) in meeting Texas’ future transportation needs during testimony before the Senate Transportation Committee. “Let me assure you, as an industry we absolutely support and recognize the need for building and maintaining roads in Texas,� said Texas Farm Bureau State Director Tom Paben. “We feel this can be accomplished within the current framework of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT).� “However, there is a need for redirection, as well as a review of the current priorities of the agency,� Paben added, noting several concerns about...

Several Oklahoma legislators are concerned that individuals and organizations are quietly working on plans to create a privately-operated tollway in Oklahoma. Many referred to Spain-based Cintra, which has been involved in the development of a proposed Trans-Texas Corridor. Cintra also took over the operation of the Indiana East-West Toll Road from the Indiana Department of Transportation in 2006. Oklahoma State Sen. Randy Brogdon and state representatives Eric Proctor, Richard Morrisette, Scott Inman and Charles Key all expressed concern that efforts to open up Oklahoma to a privately operated tollway system were being kept out of the view of the general...

South Texas is not only going to get its first interstate - it is also going to get a second and a third. State transportation officials knew one of three southern highways - U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77 in Cameron County or U.S. Highway 59 in Webb County - would eventually become part of an interstate stretching from the Texas-Mexico border to Texarkana, in the northeast part of the state. Only Webb County is currently served by an interstate. The state's Trans-Texas Corridor plan calls for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north,...

SH 130 Concession Company LLC finalized the legal details of a financial close with Texas DOT on a $1,360m toll concession to build SH130 segments 5&6 Thursday and Friday last week in bankers' offices in New York City - at Orrick, 666 Fifth Avenue. The actual money flows should occur on Thursday or Friday (Mar 13 or 14) this week, Jose Maria Lopez de Fuentes, president of Cintra North America, told us this morning. Hundreds of documents and over 20 lawyers were involved last week representing TxDOT, private equity people, banks, mostly European, the TIFIA loan group from FHWA, and...

Officials with the Spanish toll road operator Cintra have announced that the company has secured $430 million in loans from the U.S. government to build and operate two segments of a toll road in central Texas. Cintra officials announced the company’s financial plan for the $1.36 billion Highway 130 segments on Monday, March 10. OOIDA Senior Government Affairs Representative Mike Joyce told Land Line that the Association does raise red flags when federal dollars are used to subsidize private investors. Officials with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association are not, however, categorically opposed to a state using future toll revenue to...

Heated comments flew around the room as more than 175 citizens gathered to voice their opinions at the TxDOT open house and public hearing on the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor held at the Humble Civic Center on Feb. 28, 2008. Congress designated I-69 as a high priority corridor in 1991 and again in 1998. In 2002, TxDOT unveiled the Trans-Texas Corridor project to accommodate Texas' future transportation needs. The TTC is a part of a 4,000-mile system of rail lines, truck and car lanes and concentrated utility routes to improve international and intrastate movement of goods and people from Canada to the...

One major concern I discussed a few weeks ago regarding the Trans Texas Corridor is where the land will come from. Another concern is where the money will come from. Official government websites for the TTC assure that public-private partnerships will shield the taxpayer from bearing too much of the cost burden, but a careful reading shows the door is definitely open to public funding sources, while at the same time there is no doubt of the intention to charge tolls on the road. Taxpayers already pay for their transportation system through hefty gasoline taxes, vehicle registration fees, and other...

HEMPSTEAD -- The Trans Texas Corridor may be the most controversial highway ever built in Texas. That is, if it ever gets built. All month, there have been public hearings throughout the area where people have been showing up in droves to oppose it. People don’t drive very fast on Odis Styers’ family ranch near Hempstead, but TxDOT wants that to change. “It’s quiet, it’s peaceful,” Styers said. “It’s a shame a road is gonna mess it up.” The road is the Trans Texas Corridor. The plans call for it to come through here, and with it: separate lanes for...

AUSTIN - When it comes to road improvement and maintenance, by most accounts, the South Plains and Panhandle are fortunate. Despite a $1.1 billion accounting error, the Texas Department of Transportation recently reported no projects in the region have been canceled or delayed while cities like Dallas, Houston and Laredo had at least a half dozen highway projects delayed. But the $1.1 billion-error, which occurred because TxDOT inadvertently counted some bond money twice and consequently allocated more funding than it had, is just the latest problem plaguing the beleaguered agency. For months, TxDOT executive director Amadeo Saenz and other transportation...

Local residents who want to add their two cents about the proposed Interstate 69 construction won't have to fill their tanks to do it. TxDOT is coming to Longview. The Texas Department of Transportation is holding 46 public hearings this month in East and South Texas along the planned corridor, including Tuesday's meeting in Longview. The hearings will give Texans a chance to comment and ask questions about the proposed Interstate 69/Trans-Texas Corridor, a collection of passenger and freight roadways, utility and rail lines from Texarkana to the Rio Grande Valley. A draft environmental impact statement released in November suggests...

The majority of residents from Walker and area counties made it clear Wednesday night how they feel about the proposed I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor. They are strongly opposed to it. An estimated 800 people took action on the controversial issue. The second town hall meeting in Huntsville, offering a chance for open dialogue between residents and the Texas Department of Transportation, took on a different tone than the initial meeting Jan. 23 at the Walker Education Center. With the main building at the Walker County Fairgrounds able to accommodate the large crowd, property owners and other residents expressed their dissatisfaction with Gov....

Some Texans are afraid of losing their land to the Trans-Texas Corridor while others loathe the thought of a quarter-mile-wide swath of toll roads and railway lines transforming the countryside into a superhighway. People continue to turn out in droves at public meetings concerning the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor proposal, specifically the portion known as the TTC-69 proposed from Brownsville to Texarkana. A meeting Monday, Jan. 28, at the fairgrounds in Austin County was no exception, drawing more than 1,000 people. Opposition to the proposed corridor has come from people in all walks of life, said Chris Steinbach, chief of staff...

Gov. Rick Perry's ambitious Trans-Texas Corridor plan, and his advocacy of toll funding for future roads, hit the skids in a skeptical Legislature last spring. The road shows no signs of getting any smoother as state transportation officials try to sell the plan to Houston-area audiences. "This will wipe me out," Dee Bond told a panel of corridor advocates at a town hall meeting in Rosenberg last week. The panel, which included Texas Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes of Houston and Steve Simmons, deputy executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, was there to explain and gather comment on a...

CARTHAGE, Texas — State transportation officials appear to have a tough sales job ahead as they try to pave the way for new highways — mostly toll roads — to deal with the booming Texas population. Texas Department of Transportation executives headed to Carthage on Wednesday for the second stop in a monthlong series of public town hall meetings to discuss the Trans Texas Corridor, a proposed network of superhighway toll roads, and other transportation issues. The unprecedented sessions, which began Tuesday night in Texarkana, are intended to answer questions and improve communication between the agency and people who use...

More and higher tolls won't be enough to pay for the nation's highway needs, a bipartisan study panel chaired by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation said today in a long-awaited report. Instead, Congress will need to raise the federal gas tax by 25 to 40 cents a gallon over five years, according to the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission. The 12-member commission is a bipartisan panel formed by Congress in 2005 to rethink the way the nation builds and pays for its highways and transit systems. "There is no free lunch," Jack Schenendorf, vice chairman of the...

TEXARKANA, Texas — The biggest construction project ever attempted in Texas comes under public debate beginning Tuesday in the first of a series of town hall meetings about a proposed 4,000-mile network of superhighway toll roads. The Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, as it's become known, was initiated six years ago by Gov. Rick Perry. It's rankled opponents who characterize it as the largest government grab of private property in the state's history and an unneeded and improper expansion of toll roads. Texas Department of Transportation officials, and Perry, have defended the project as necessary to address future traffic concerns in...

2007 ended on a sad note for the family and friends of Ric Williamson, the chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission who died Sunday after a heart attack. Given his aggressive and often controversial role in reshaping Texas highway construction, his death leaves the state and Gov. Rick Perry with an important question about how to move forward after Williamson’s memorial service today. Williamson, 55, a successful business owner and former state representative from Weatherford, was appointed to the transportation commission in 2001 by his good friend Perry and was named chairman in 2004. He became a passionate advocate of...

Seeking “a more productive and informative conversation about transportation,� Texas Department of Transportation officials have scheduled a series of town hall meetings along the Interstate 69/Trans Texas Corridor, including in Rosenberg. Also this month, the department issued a formal request for proposals from potential “private sector partner,� for “detailed plans on how to finance, design, construct, operate and maintain I-69/TTC.� A panel of TxDOT officials will answer questions from the public about the massive highway project, starting at 6:30 p.m. Jan. 24, at the Rosenberg Civic Center, at 3825 State Highway 36. A portion of the controversial project is is...

Ever wish you weren't right? In 1997, the notion of selling off publicly owned infrastructure to private sector operators was coming into its own. After the city hired a consultant to determine the value of the publicly owned CPS Energy, it raised red flags. CPS consistently charges some of Texas' lowest utility rates while providing a significant chunk of the city's revenue, I argued. Profit motives can produce wondrous results. But uncontrolled, they can also produce costly disasters. Some things — especially those that efficiently deliver services that are essential — are best kept in the public sector to assure...

STAPLES — Dennis Elam knew he wasn’t cut out to be a city dweller during the one month he lived in San Marcos with his new wife, Brenda, after they were married in 1963. “I’ve got to have my horse. They won’t let me keep him in an apartment,” Elam said. The problem for Elam and his family is that the State Highway 130 construction contractor and the property acquisition firm has tapped the 57 acres they live and work cattle on and it is smack in the middle of the path of the highway where it will connect with...

Coin trays in Texas cars may actually get to see the faces of dead presidents. The much-discussed and controversial Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, has breathed life into the debate of toll roads in Texas. Plans for the Trans-Texas Corridor include TTC-Instate 35, which starts in Laredo and extends north to Gainesville, running along the eastern part of Texas; and Interstate 69/TCC, which has three openings in Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville and follows the coast to Texarkana. Much of the TTC will be privately operated toll roads, run by the Spanish firm Cintra. The TTC will not run through San Antonio,...

Three private groups are now in the hunt to build U.S. 281 toll lanes, but two big foreign companies competing just a short while ago to build and lease a larger toll network here have dropped out. The Alamo Regional Mobility Authority board voted Wednesday to let all three teams submit plans to rebuild U.S. 281 north of Loop 1604 into a tollway with free access roads by 2012. It's the fledging agency's first project. "Goodness knows we have been two and a half years getting here," board member Bob Thompson said. "Maybe it's even more important to see the...

Some readers have asked me to re-visit a few of my concerns regarding the Trans-Texas Corridor or TTC, because I have mentioned the project in my last two columns. Recently, I introduced what I like to call Nosygate. I think that is an appropriate name for the advertising campaign and subsequent information gathering effort, by a private company, on behalf of the Texas Department of Transportation or TxDOT. A brief re-cap is probably in order. Unsuspecting motorists had their license tag numbers photographed while traveling and minding their own business. Their tag numbers were then traced to their home address.Their...

Toll road contract in Texas allows state to lower speed limits on nearby interstate freeway to avoid paying penalties to a private company. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has agreed to consider lowering the maximum speed limit on a stretch of interstate highway that competes with a planned toll road. Cintra-Zachary, a joint Spanish-US venture, paid TxDOT $1.3 billion for the right to collect tolls on 40-miles of State Highway 130 set for construction beginning in 2009. Although TxDOT suggested that free market competition was part of the goal of using a public-private partnerships to construct and operate roads,...

Road plans in Texas have conspiracy theorists in an uproar I am driving along a mostly empty road in rural Fayette County, Texas, about an hour east of Austin, looking for the NAFTA superhighway -- the one that Stephen Harper, George W. Bush and Felipe Calderón mocked as a conspiracy theory when they were asked about it at their trilateral meeting in Montebello, Que., in August. Critics, who say that behind the leaders' denials lurks a larger, nefarious plan to unite North America, fear that such a roadway will eventually be a four-football-stadium-wide artery connecting Mexico, the U.S. and Canada,...

...[The building of the Trans-Texas Corridor] is all too sinister for Jerome Corsi, the Vietnam War veteran who helped lead the Swift Boat charge against John Kerry. Corsi has knitted disparate strands of each of these separate road projects to help convince fellow xenophobes such as Pat Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Lou Dobbs and the John Birch Society that the corridor is the first leg of a secret federal project called the NAFTA Superhighway, a four-football-field wide monstrosity that would run from Mexico's Yucatan to Canada's Yukon... Yet even Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican candidate for president, has fallen...

After conducting business as though it were a private entity rather than a public trust, the Texas Department of Transportation is now trying to turn the tide of public opinion in its favor. The Keep Texas Moving campaign is a $7 million to $9 million effort designed to promote various transportation projects in the state. According to the campaign site, www.keeptexasmoving.com, Texans can learn more about such projects as the vast Trans-Texas Corridor and "its promise for Texas." Unfortunately, TxDOT has a history of not being entirely forthcoming about transportation plans. Last year, agency officials and the road-building consortium Cintra-Zachry...

Even if it's just for a moment, let us give credit where credit is due. The Texas Department of Transportation has realized — finally — that it has an image problem when it comes to convincing Texans of the need for a vast network of toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor. The realization, however, comes with a price tag of $7 million to $9 million that, rather than going to build highways, will fuel an advertising campaign centered around a memo titled, "Keep Texas Moving: Tolling and Trans-Texas Corridor Outreach." This is where I get off the track. Outreach? The...

AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Transportation, which complains about chronic underfunding, has launched a multimillion-dollar campaign that promotes the divisive Trans-Texas Corridor plan and toll roads. The campaign is anticipated to cost $7 million to $9 million, according to a memo titled "Keep Texas Moving: Tolling and Trans-Texas Corridor Outreach" sent to transportation officials by Coby Chase, director of the agency's government and public affairs division. Such use of state highway-fund dollars is drawing questions, but the department says it's an important effort to educate and engage Texans. "It's a waste of money," said Rep. Warren Chisum, chairman of...

Nearly a fifth of America's roads are now considered in poor shape and about one-in-four bridges is rated "structurally deficient." The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that the cost to fix these problems is a staggering $460 billion. The tab grows far larger when you add in the hundreds of billions to build the new transportation infrastructure that's needed to handle the country's growth. Part of the problem is that big increases in state and local spending for politically popular programs, especially Medicaid and education, as well costly public employee pensions and benefits, have crowded out infrastructure -- even as...

Texas needs the Trans-Texas Corridor because of its surging population, a representative for Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday while speaking in Cleburne. Plans are to build the multi-lane highway and rail system parallel to Interstate 35, north-south through the center of the state. Kris Heckmann, deputy director of Perry’s Legislative Division spoke at the Cleburne Civic Center at the invitation of the Johnson County Republican Women for their monthly meeting. Every decade since World War II, Texas’ population has increased by at least 20 percent, Heckmann said. In 1990, the state’s population was 16.5 million, and today the population is...

Now that legislators have gone home and trumpeted how they passed a bill to freeze private financing of toll roads, the governor's office has some bubble-busting news. There isn't much of a moratorium in Senate Bill 792. "Of any kind, that we can tell," said Robert Black, spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry. "Unless there was something screwy that happened." Actually, there were plenty of screwy machinations in the Legislature as lawmakers hammered out bills to rein in tolling powers of the Texas Department of Transportation. Slapping a two-year moratorium on privatization contracts started out simple. But skittish lawmakers carved out...

The nation's transportation experts have identified their top three priorities: a national freight network, urban congestion and connecting new urban centers with the interstate system. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, meeting in national conference last month, heard futurists predict that the cost of meeting the transportation needs would be $3.1 trillion over the next 25 years. State and local governments are turning to "public-private partnerships," or PPPs, to produce the funding. The city of Chicago was happy to partner with a Spanish-Australian group that paid $1.83 billion for a 99-year lease to operate the Chicago Skyway....

If anything has approximated unanimity in the 80th Texas Legislature, it is the desire to slow down on toll roads. This has left the state’s biggest proponent of toll roads, Gov. Rick Perry, the odd man out. But he’s still the man with the veto pen. The House and Senate last week overwhelmingly approved a two-year moratorium on most toll roads, including the Trans-Texas Corridor. Lawmakers earlier sent a bill to Perry with toll-road restrictions. He vetoed it, and threatened a special session if he didn’t get a bill he could sign. The bill that emerged reportedly meets his terms....

Paul Burka’s blog has a nice update on the legislative efforts to de-rail Gov. Perry’s Trans Texas Corridor project. It hasn’t been stopped yet (reference to bills are bills to halt the TTC): So here’s where we are. HB 1892, the original bill, has been vetoed. SB 792, Carona’s bill, is in conference committee. The governor’s office, through former senator Ken Armbrister, is trying to round up enough votes in the Senate (11) to block an override of the veto. If he is successful, then the governor holds all the cards. He can veto 792 as well, with the calendar...

Robert Poole, a mechanical engineer who has advised the administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to privatize U.S. highways, estimates that more than $25 billion in Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) highway projects are planned or approved in the United States. Now, a prominent Oklahoma state representative has invited Poole to promote his PPP toll road ideas, a move evidently designed to counter growing citizen opposition. Poole Lobbies for PPP Highways in Oklahoma Oklahoma House Speaker, Republican Lance Cargill, the founder of a group known as The 100 Ideas Initiative, has invited Poole to give a June...

More projects exempted from private toll road moratorium in unanimous Senate vote. The Texas Senate, after hours of closed-door negotiations stamped out hot spots of dissent, unanimously passed revamped toll road legislation Monday that would supplant a bill languishing on Gov. Rick Perry's desk. Perry, who has made it clear he would veto the first bill, House Bill 1892, immediately signaled that he would allow Senate Bill 792 to become law if the House passes it in its current form. Lawmakers involved in the negotiations say they hope to get SB 792 to Perry late this week in time to...

Our colleagues at The Dallas Morning News offered this advice to lawmakers fighting to keep intact complex regional plans to deal with transportation issues in Dallas, Fort Worth and the surrounding counties: "Keep Up the Fight." Good advice. Both the Dallas paper and the Star-Telegram have felt some ownership of this issue since we combined on a joint editorial project in 2003, calling for a regionwide effort to link area cities by rail. But rail is only part of the solution to the serious problem of traffic congestion that is approaching gridlock during parts of the day. Officials in North...