Free Republic

Toll road opponents today will ask the Sunset Advisory Committee of the Texas Legislature to abolish the Texas Department of Transportation, saying the agency has become too corrupt and too dysfunctional to fix, 1200 WOAI news reports. "We want to see elected leadership at the helm of Tex-DOT," says long time toll road opponent Terri Hall, the founder of the citizen action group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom. "We are done with this unelected beaurocracy that is just an arm of private road building companies and the lackeys of this governor." The idea of eliminating TexDOT and establishing a...

As the state's population continues to grow in its urban centers, expansion plans for the highway system continue to be the focus for transportation improvements. The Trans Texas Corridor proposal is aimed to alleviate traffic congestion, improve air quality and provide safer traveling for drivers, among other goals. In 2002, Texas Governor Rick Perry released the plan to create the passageway, which spans northeast from Laredo to Oklahoma and is set to total 4,000 miles in the next 50 years. The $140 billion project calls for the incorporation of new toll roads, commuter railways, power lines and gas pipelines, while...

The Texas Department of Transportation's request for a 30-day extension of the public comment period for the Interstate-69/Trans-Texas Corridor Tier One Draft Environmental Impact Statement has been granted. The request was approved by the Federal Highway Administration which oversees the environmental review process for transportation projects. TxDOT has held over 500 meetings on the Trans-Texas Corridor including 254 county meetings, 95 environmental meetings and hearings on I-69/TTC, 171 environmental meetings and hearings on TTC-35, and 12 town hall meetings. The public comment period opened in December, and an extension through April 18th allows more citizens the opportunity to express their...

Leaders with the Texas Department of Transportation sought to allay fears about the Trans-Texas Corridor Thursday night in Rosenberg with a “town hall” meeting. The meeting proceeded fairly smoothly, but hardly seemed to put a dent in the large crowd's seemingly uniform opposition to the proposal of a massive transportation corridor. Hank Gilbert, a regular speaker at TTC events and leader of an anti-TTC non-profit group, drew cheers for suggesting TxDOT officials have failed to make the case for a large, privately owned transportation cluster. “No good argument has been made for the TTC that would allow farmers to be...

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...

San Antonio can get new railroad tracks built around the city, but they'd likely be part of the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor, state officials said Monday. "I know of no mechanism to relocate rail in rural areas other than the Trans-Texas Corridor," said David Casteel, who heads the Texas Department of Transportation's local office. Casteel and other officials asked the Metropolitan Planning Organization board to authorize a $5 million federal study to select a route for the new tracks, which could take three years. TxDOT would put up a 20 percent local match. "We are listening to what the public is...

When a close call like last week's train derailment in Beacon Hill happens, the "what if" questions — as in what if a deadly poison had been released near so many homes — soon are followed by questions about what can be done. But answers to how long it will take to reroute most trains out of San Antonio's core, how much it will cost and where the money will come from don't come easily. And the best guesses on fixing the problem — a decade or more and billions of dollars — don't help people sleep much better. "It's...

The debate over the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor may be shaping up to be a battle between those who have the clout to make it happen and those who wish they had the clout to stop it. The Texas Department of Transportation’s super-highway of the future is stirring up bad memories of the past for some. The proposed toll road would run somewhere east of San Antonio. Nothing like it has ever been seen in this country. Another 200 or so people showed up at the meeting Thursday night, most of them from rural East Bexar County. They're fighting to keep...

In the next few decades, the ever-growing Dallas-Fort Worth area could experience striking changes in the way that people and goods move. North Central Texas' population has been ballooning faster than the transportation infrastructure -- a situation akin to that of a growing middle-schooler whose old jeans don't quite fit anymore. With the Metroplex expected to add about 4 million people by 2030, it's hard to imagine the hellish traffic jams that we'll face in the future unless we take giant steps to reverse course. New transportation projects and strategies are being hashed out now that might someday save us...

BEXAR COUNTY DEMOCRATS Calendar of Events Mon.-Fri., Now - Oct. 11 2005-09-17 Call for times Help Register Katrina Victims at Kelly AFB Building 171, Kelly FSB San Antonio, TX If you are a voter registrar or a volunteer who would like to help, please join us to help register the heavily Democratic victims of Hurricane Katrina now based at Kelly AFB. Please call the contact number below for information on times. Oct. 11 is the last day to register to vote for the Nov. 8 election, which includes the proposed amendment to the Texas Constitution, which would ban gay marriage....

When more than half of Bexar County's delegation to the Texas House complains about being excluded from the legislative process, it's logical to conclude San Antonio's interests are not being served. Six Democratic lawmakers from Bexar County met recently with the Express-News Editorial Board to air the opinion that they were shut out of the debate during the just-completed special session on school finance. "We're being precluded from representing our school districts," Rep. Carlos Uresti said. The criticism, of course, is directed at House Speaker Tom Craddick, the first Republican speaker of the Texas House in modern times. Craddick's decision...

There is a coup underway in the Bexar County Republican Party. For much too long, the Patron System has dictated how San Siestaville is run. Even as conservatism surges across the state and nation and liberalism ebbs, San Antonio’s entrenched and calcified Republican guard seems to be comfortable with the archaic cunado system under which we all live. Henry B Gonzales reportedly once said, “Old Democrats are good at producing young Republicans.” Today’s political climate strongly confirms that observation. An exploited Hispanic student base increasingly rejects the “Liberal Plantation,” the perpetual left-wing influence to believe that Anglos are Mexican-haters and...

In a county known for a competitive two-party system, the race is on for who will lead local Democrats and Republicans during a presidential year expected to mobilize high voter turnout. The campaigns for the top spot in both county parties reflect a tension between old-style activists who want to re-energize the grass-roots base and those who see the value of fund raising and political consultants in an era of high-dollar campaigning. "Both parties are looking for an identity," said Henry Flores, a St. Mary's University political scientist. Bexar County Republican Party Chairman Roy Barrera Jr. announced Wednesday that he...

Charged with possessing baggies of crack cocaine, Gerald Evans wrote long pleadings in his defense and had four lawyers representing him at different times, but he got perhaps the most help from the Sheriff's Department. Bexar County employees in the department's property room destroyed and auctioned items that authorities said linked Evans to the drugs, a goof that gave federal prosecutors last-minute cold feet. So, instead of going to trial this week, Evans and co-defendant David Lee went free after the case was dismissed on the eve of a final pretrial hearing — a decision that irked deputies who conducted...

SAN ANTONIO -- A federal judge ruled on the last day of early voting Friday that the two-sheet ballot Bexar County has been using for two weeks violates state and federal laws. U.S. District Judge Edward C. Prado wrote that the ballot, which requires voters wanting to vote a straight ticket to mark both sheets, "is a change affecting voting and is ineffective without preclearance from the Department of Justice under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act." Prado noted that Bexar County already has arranged for a one-page ballot that meets legal standards to be available in all polling...