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EDITORIAL: Demise of the Trans-Texas Corridor
Jan 08, 2009 (The Dallas Morning News - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
The Trans-Texas Corridor is dead, given an official burial this week by the very governor who took the wraps off his futuristic, grandly named vision six years ago.
Its many noisy detractors may rejoice, but there are things to mourn -- like the ability to perfect a concept worth pursuing. Today's I-35 was designed for President Dwight Eisenhower's America, before anyone dreamed that millions of trucks would barrel north toward Dallas-Fort Worth with goods from Mexico. The roadway also bears the burden of an increasingly urbanized Texas, with 45 percent of Texas' 24.5 million people now living within 50 miles of the artery.
It made sense to sketch out a plan for Texas for the next 50 years. A parallel, dedicated I-35 toll corridor for cars and freight would help relieve urban congestion and improve air quality. Including high-speed passenger rail would give auto-bound Texans new options for traveling between core cities.
Gov. Rick Perry is not blameless for the lost opportunity. The very scope of the proposal -- and the fact that it banked on private investors -- made it a tough sell, and he was not an effective lead salesman.
The Texas Department of Transportation's successor plan is a more modest series of parallel segments, tolled and untolled, rail here, road there, as demand dictates and politics allow. It avoids incitement by backing off the idea of taking a broad swath of acreage. (It also avoids incitement with a dulled-down name, Innovative Connectivity.)
If enemies of the corridor consider the transportation fight over, we'd like to remind them that the state's population is not done exploding; it could double in the next 30 years. The state's motor-fuels tax isn't coming close to meeting road-building needs, keeping the argument alive for private investment.
In Dallas-Fort Worth, transportation officials want to know how, in the absence of the corridor model, major through freight will be routed around the urban centers. That is especially important in southern Dallas County, with the proliferation of truck traffic in and out of shipping hubs.
Unbuilt remnants of the corridor project remain as expensive yet vital links for a safe, modern transportation network. Critics who didn't like yesterday's approach to the problem need to put their own solutions on the line.
To see more of The Dallas Morning News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.dallasnews.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Dallas Morning News
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