Posted on 09/13/2006 12:52:31 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Making stupid statements brought Clayton Williams down in 1990 and put Ma Richards in the Texas Governor's Office.
The TTC will put Granny Strayhorn in the same office in January.
Carole and her first husband, Barr McClellan, have Scott, Mark, and twins Brad and Dudley.
A side note about ole Barr: he now lives in (I think) Mississippi and has written a book accusing LBJ of complicity in the Kennedy assassination.
Those contractors will eat. They might even need a place to sleep, clothing to wear, boots, and a pickup truck with a trailer. Some of them even drink beer that is brewed in Texas. You are right in assuming that they will probably not hang out at the art museums, playhouses, and concert halls. But their wives and daughters might. I was originally against the whole TTC plan. After attending two community hearings, and doing a fair amount of research the conclusion that I draw is that it is good for Texas and Texans.
I do want for anyone that has land taken to be justly and fairly compensated. I own land here. I would like to think that easement compensation would be fair. County governments have tremendous clout and influence in Texas. As does the Railroad Commission. Affected property owners should be working with Agricultural as well. The Governor of Texas does not rule by fiat, no matter what Kinky believes. Perry simply championed a program, and nobody else came up with an alternative. And I am NOT a Perry fan. But he is our idiot, since nobody in the party stepped up to challenge him.
I-35 in Austin is FUBARed. It splits into an upper and lower deck. The lower deck is 2 lanes and has 50 ft. entrance/exit ramps every 1/4 mile. The upper deck is supposedly the faster way with fewer exits, but they put it on the outside so at least heading southbound, one of the lanes quickly becomes an exit only lane with only 3 lanes continuing after the decks rejoin. So there's one bottleneck that can't be fixed by adding more lanes.
The contractors could make a very nice living making I35
usable. I just cannot see why we need a superroad
that few will use.
If Austin wants a Big Dig, I would not be against it even
if morion-wearing Spaniards in fancy pants manned the tollbooths. But I can't for the life of me understand why they want to pave over the
Cross Timbers for the occaisional Mexican truck and
leave us working stiffs to commute on the same decrepit
badly designed I35.
This is about connecting all of Texas, even the impoverished Rio Grande Valley. If each city tried to come up with their own plan, it would be a multibillion tax dollar moneyhole. I-35 is still slated for improvements. Perry gets slammed for agreeing to the business tax, because "Robin Hood" was deemed a state property tax by the Texas Supreme Court. Are you proposing Texas state funding for an Austin Big Dig? Wowser. TTC is NOT a perfect solution. Granny, the Dim, and Kinky have not put a single counter proposal forward. Not one. We do not have the option of doing nothing.
Who has? The point being that there will be far fewer by routing via rural areas than expanding I-35 and booting out many businesses and houses along the frontage roads. And a rural route can especially minimize home and business takings because there are more routing options to use farm or ranch land. Grassy pastures are not exactly in short supply in central and north TX.
The TTC will assure that they take place in non-urbanized farm and pasture lands far from urbanization and access rather than along the I35 corridor where the traffic is now.
Not that far, generally parallel and within 5-10 miles to the east of I-35. From Georgetown going south it will be built in place of an already planned highway, so killing the TTC concept won't prevent any land takings south of Georgetown(in fact the Georgetown-Lockhart segment will open next year, minus the truck lanes, utilities, and rail segments, the latter which may never be built in that section.) From south of Midlothian to north of Denton the TTC will simply be built instead of the long-planned outer loop, so again killing it won't eliminate any takings since that loop will be built anyway.
The trucks you think will use the TTC will still be on I35 because they are mostly local traffic and TTC won't help that (who wants to pay a toll?). Long hauls won't want to pay it either. Maybe the few trucks that are company owned won't mind but the owner operators are going to dodge tollbooths as they do now.
Some won't, but many will, because time is money and the truck lanes will have a higher speed limit, reduced grades (so less of the slow uphill climbs), and less congestion. Plus there are various means to induce trucks to use the lanes that the state can implement if this becomes a problem (tax incentives, etc.)
So I'll still be stuck behind them even after Perry's folly is built. Except that my ranch will be under it. Guess I'll be gone from Texas if that happens.
Yeah, right. IIRC, you said you live north of Ft. Worth? Given that for most of the route the maximum width needed will be 800', that the route around DFW is going to use the ROW of an already planned road, and that the section north of DFW to the OK border isn't planned to be built until after 2025, the chances of you losing your land are virtually nil, and even lower for that happening in the next 15-20 years. TXDOT has already said that they will use their standard procedures for ROW acquisition, one of which is an agreement where they buy purchase rights for the land at a set price but the owner has the right to continue occupancy and use until construction starts.
But I can't for the life of me understand why they want to pave over the Cross Timbers for the occaisional Mexican truck and leave us working stiffs to commute on the same decrepit badly designed I35.
More drama queening. The San Antonio-Laredo portion isn't scheduled to be built until after 2025, and again, the outer loop around DFW that the TTC will use was already planned and going to get built anyway. They aren't "Paving over the Cross Timbers", they are building a single road that was already planned for the majority of its length. If you have a problem with subdivisions popping up on the exterior of DFW, take it up with the local cities and counties. The developers are eating up many multiple times more land than this single road.
TTC-35 will be roughly 500 miles long from Gainesville to Laredo. So are you claiming that it will be 2 miles wide, or is this just another example of you wildly exaggerating or just making it up?
Would that be SH-130 by any chance? I don't think inclusion of that route in the Trans-Texas Corridor has been decided yet.
Thanks for the ping!
I believe that the TTC plan is or 4,000 miles of highways, at 0.25 miles wide. That will take 1000 square miles. I probably could have done a better job separating my points, so yes, the gov. is ONLY taking roughly 125 square miles to build the I-35 portion. The other 875 square miles will be taken from its private owners, by force if necessary, at a later time.
Aren't you glad we have this type of governor.
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