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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

----- Original Message ----- From: Gene GeRue<mailto:genegerue AT ruralize.com> 
> divided we fall, united we go to hell together. Not sure if I 
made that last one up. Probably not--there is nothing new under the sun.

I like the one about "we're all in the same boat -
and it's sinking ...."
>From tonihawr AT msn.com  Mon Nov 29 14:34:04 2004
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From: "Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>
To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
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Subject: Re: [Homestead] scary and not : Verlyn enjoys ....
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----- Original Message ----- From: 
sanrico AT highdesert.com<mailto:sanrico AT highdesert.com> > Nov 26 -- Ravali 
Republic Online       
http://www.planetizen.com/news/item.php?id=15064&rf=e<http://www.planetizen.com/news/item.php?id=15064&rf=e>
     Sandy

Sandy, I don't know how I got to the link below from the above,
but after reading yours it led me to this frightening project that
is *already* building :

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101041206-832224-2,00.html<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101041206-832224-2,00.html>

 

The Next Wave in Superhighways, or A Big, Fat Texas Boondoggle?
The fight is on over a plan to build vast corridors for cars, trucks, trains 
- and almost everything else
By CATHY BOOTH; THOMAS HUTTO<javascript:void(0)>

Monday, Dec. 06, 2004
To see the future of transportation in Texas, you have to drive out to the 
prairie north of Austin, past the sprawling plants of Dell and Samsung, to 
the farthest suburbs, where wild grass and cornfields nuzzle up to McMansions 
with their perfect green lawns. There, giant earthmovers, their wheels taller 
than a Texan in his boots, are ripping up the gummy, black soil to lay a 
49-mile stretch of concrete tollway. State Highway 130, at a cost of $1.5 
billion, is the biggest highway project under way in the U.S. today. It is 
also the first test in concrete for the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC)--a radical 
rethinking of the nation's Eisenhower-era roadways. 

The brainchild of Texas' Republican Governor, Rick Perry, the TTC would, if 
built, completely transform the state's highways over the next 50 years, 
creating a 4,000-mile network of multimodal corridors for transporting goods 
and people by car, truck, rail and utility line. Each corridor would have six 
lanes for cars, four additional lanes for 18-wheel trucks, half a dozen rail 
lines and a utility zone for moving oil and water, gas and electricity, even 
broadband data. The corridors could measure up to a quarter of a mile across. 
The projected cost, at least $183 billion, is more than the original price 
tag for the entire U.S. interstate system. But Texas, going it alone, is 
seeking private companies to take on the mammoth job of constructing, 
financing, operating and maintaining the network. To pay for the roads, 
developers will rely on a familiar but long-neglected method of financing: 
tollbooths. 

Depending on whom you talk to, the Trans-Texas Corridor is either an 
innovative solution to the U.S.'s overcrowded highway system or a Texas-size 
boondoggle. Backers claim that such corridors are needed to divert road and 
rail traffic - NAFTA truckers driving up from Mexico, railcars of Chinese 
goods from Western ports, hazardous cargoes of all kinds - from congested 
urban areas. Buying land for the system now, decades before it's needed, 
would cut acquisition costs and might entice businesses to relocate inside 
the corridors. T. Boone Pickens could ship his West Texas water across the 
state in pipelines through the corridors; oil and gas could be shipped north 
from Mexico; even high-speed passenger rail lines could become reality. "The 
Trans-Texas Corridor is not just a road, not just asphalt," says Perry. "It's 
a vision." 

Opponents of the corridor range from environmentalists (the Sierra Club has 
called it "evil") to the Texas Republican Party, which has urged the 
legislature to repeal it. Texas, which is losing more land to sprawl than any 
other state, would need more than 9,000 sq. mi. of right-of-way for the 
corridors, affecting critical wetlands and pristine prairie lands. The Big 
Thicket National Preserve, considered "the biological crossroads of North 
America" for its mix of habitats, was put on the list of most-endangered 
parks by the National Parks Conservation Association this year, in part 
because of the threat from the Perry plan. 

Environmentalists have found an unlikely ally in traditionally conservative 
landowners worried about property rights. David Langford, an activist for the 
Texas Wildlife Association, is organizing farmers and ranchers whose land 
could be cut in half or condemned by the Trans-Texas Corridor. An early plan 
for central Texas showed a corridor passing near the homestead Langford's 
family settled in 1851. With the state's new "quick claim" ability - granted 
under TTC legislation - his family homestead could be gone in 90 days, he 
says, transferred to private investors operating the corridor. Though he 
would be compensated financially, he's still steamed. "I can't believe Rick 
Perry's grandfather would want his house and ranch taken and turned over to 
Paris Hilton's family to build a hotel on one of these roads," he says.

Local politicians are mobilizing too. The TTC legislation, passed after eight 
hours of debate, in June 2003, drew little attention until Republican 
activist David Stall, a former city manager of Columbus, in East Texas, 
discovered a notice for hearings buried in the ads for gravel and 
road-material bids. He was "horrified" to discover that the corridor, as a 
limited-access turnpike, would steal business his town gets from travelers. 
Today public officials from six counties along the corridor route have joined 
his grass-roots group, CorridorWatch, to oppose the TTC. "There is no 
legislative oversight, no elected officials overseeing the contracts to build 
and operate these toll roads," Stall complains. 

But the worst ruckus broke out in Austin last summer, when commuters realized 
that the "innovative" financing authorized by the Trans-Texas legislation 
meant they would start paying tolls. Traditionally, highways have been 
financed by gasoline-tax revenues. But that money now barely covers road 
maintenance, much less new construction, and raising gas taxes is as 
politically unpalatable in Texas as it is everywhere else. The state, for the 
first time, can go into debt by issuing bonds for new roads. Although those 
bonds can be paid back by a number of possible revenue sources (such as 
steeper fines for drunken driving), Texas policy now is to look first at 
tolling for all new highway projects. 

What's more, the TTC legislation allows existing roads, not just new ones, to 
be converted to tollways. "They can take any highway anywhere, anytime, and 
put a tollbooth there," says Sal Costello, whose group, AustinTollParty, 
argues that putting tollbooths on roads already paid for with gas taxes 
amounts to "double taxation" of commuters. The political outcry is having an 
effect. After Austin approved eight new toll projects for roads and bridges, 
a recall campaign was launched against the Democratic mayor and two city 
councilmen. "It's been a true grass prairie fire," says Brewster McCracken, 
one of the city councilmen targeted. He's now against conversions. 

Congress in the 1950s expressly rejected tolls as a way of financing the 
nation's interstate highways. But the Bush Administration, faced with an 
aging freeway system and a lack of money for building and maintenance, is 
rethinking the idea. Mary E. Peters, head of the Federal Highway 
Administration, has called Perry's TTC plan a "bold concept." President Bush 
has threatened to veto any increase in the nation's 18.4¢ gasoline tax and 
has expressed support for tolls on interstate highways. Other states, such as 
California, Missouri and Minnesota, are closely watching the Texas toll 
experiment. 

Perry, a farm boy from West Texas who studied animal science at Texas A&M 
University, sees the Trans-Texas Corridor as a way to make his mark by 
tackling the state's growing congestion. Urban rush-hour drivers were stuck 
in traffic for an average of 46 hr. in 2002, nearly triple the time in 1982, 
according to a study conducted by the Texas Transportation Institute. 
Increasingly, tolls are seen as a way to reduce traffic. "We simply can't 
afford to build our way out of traffic congestion, so we have to better 
manage it," says Michael Replogle, transportation director of Environmental 
Defense, a nonprofit group that advocates "time-of-day tolling": tolls that 
would take effect during rush hours to discourage driving at peak times.

The Trans-Texas Corridor has won accolades from conservatives like Wendell 
Cox, transportation guru at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, who hails it 
as "the first serious innovative thinking in transportation in a 
half-century." Texas economist Ray Perryman estimates that the TTC could 
generate $135 billion in annual personal income for Texans and nearly 2.2 
million jobs. But not everyone accepts his projection of $13 billion a year 
in revenues from the corridors. Kara Kockelman at the University of Texas' 
Center for Transportation Research warns that NAFTA-generated trade could 
decline and unforeseen crises, like the terrorist attacks in 2001, could 
affect travel. The state has had to buy back its first private toll road - 
promoted by a former Democratic candidate for Governor, Tony Sanchez - for 
$20 million. 

None of that has stopped an array of private companies from trying to get a 
piece of the new Texas road-building boom. Sometime in December, the Texas 
Transportation Commission, a five-member board appointed by the Governor, 
will award a $24 billion contract to develop proposals for the TTC's first 
multimodal corridor - a 600-mile stretch from Mexico to Oklahoma needed for 
NAFTA trucking and rail. In the running are three consortiums, one headed by 
the California-based Fluor Corp., another that includes Halliburton's Kellogg 
Brown & Root subsidiary and a third headed by the Spanish tollway operator 
Cintra. Fluor got into the game early. It submitted an unsolicited bid for 
work on the Trans-Texas Corridor in early 2002, before there was even an 
approved state plan. "Our work on SH 130 is considered the TTC's precursor," 
says Fluor vice president Steve Dobbs. 

The toll issue could come back to haunt the Governor, who is up for 
re-election in 2006. Perry's hefty donations from construction firms have 
been noted by public watchdogs. Since 1997, he has received more than $1 
million from highway interests, according to reports filed with the Texas 
ethics commission. Two Republican rivals - Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and 
state comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn - have opposed the tolling of 
existing roads. Perry now says he, too, is against conversions, but notes 
that those decisions are up to local authorities. 

Meanwhile, in the town of Hutto, north of Austin, the construction on State 
Highway 130 is a sign of things to come. Farmers no longer gather at the 
cotton gin, but the town's first national chain, Home Depot, has moved in. 
Mayor Mike Ackerman drives by the construction site every day on his way to 
work and is sanguine about the changing face of his town. "Anything we can do 
to get traffic moving north and south, we need to do," he says. The question 
is whether the rest of Texas agrees with him. 

- With reporting by Hilary Hylton/Austin 

Road to the Future?
THE VISION: Cars, trucks, and rail and utility lines will travel along the 
same intrastate corridors, up to a quarter-mile in width. The cost: at least 
$183 billion, financed primarily by tolls. 

THE CASE FOR: A way to move NAFTA traffic and dangerous cargo away from urban 
areas, relieving congestion. Buying swaths of land now is cheaper in the long 
run. And with gas taxes unable to support new roads, tolls are needed. 

THE OBJECTIONS: The roads will gobble up too much land, may harm the 
environment and will take business away from the bypassed towns. As for the 
return of tollbooths - no way!