Trans-Texas Corridor project gets major overhaul

PHARR - The Trans-Texas Corridor name is dead. For the Rio Grande Valley, not much else has changed.

The Texas Department of Transportation is scrapping the name for the project and cutting its corridor width in half, the agency's executive director Amadeo Saenz announced Tuesday.

But in the Valley, where the latest plans for the corridor mostly stayed inside the footprints of U.S. 281 and U.S. 77, the announcement was met without much fanfare from local officials.

Mario Jorge, the local district engineer for TxDOT, said it will have no effect - other than the name change - on the department's plans to expand U.S. 77 with toll roads built by a private developer and to eventually construct four overpasses along U.S. 281.

And the county judges in Hidalgo and Cameron counties said they aren't concerned by the announcement, either, as long as improvements to both major arteries are done.

"They can call it the yellow brick road if they want," Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos said. "I don't care what they call it as long as we have the improvements that will augment our highways."

The Trans-Texas Corridor, a major component of Gov. Rick Perry's administration, was a plan to build a network of highway corridors up to 1,200 feet wide with toll roads, truck lanes, freight and commuter rail and utilities.

The plan has been met with widespread public criticism since it was announced six years ago, as many residents across the state have voiced concerns over the corridor's width and the massive right-of-way acquisitions it would require.

With Tuesday's announcement of its "Innovative Connectivity in Texas" plan, TxDOT indicated a one-size fits all approach didn't fit Texas.

All corridors will now be limited to 600 feet, and citizen-advisory committees will design corridors to meet the needs of each region, meaning not all areas would necessarily include road expansions, new rail lines or utilities.

In addition, the state will consider improving existing transportation resources - as in the case of the corridor's Valley segments that were planned along the U.S. highways - rather than breaking new ground.

And the Trans-Texas Corridor name that provoked hisses of disproval during public hearings is gone, too, a byproduct of what Jorge characterized as a public relations failure.

In its place will be the original name for the individual projects that collectively made up the Trans-Texas Corridor, such as Loop 9 in Dallas and Interstate 69 in the Valley.

Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas said TxDOT's new plan reduced the likelihood the department would condemn public lands to build 281 improvements.

He said he wants the department to build overpasses along the route to remove bottlenecks, but he is opposed to the land grab it would take to build the original 1,200-foot wide corridor.

By making the announcement, TxDOT declared its plans to only build what is necessary along the route, Jorge said. He said the "needs will drive the project," meaning TxDOT might initially construct the 281 overpasses and later decide commuter rail is also needed along the route.

Jorge said TxDOT won't shift away from the private partnerships for the individual toll projects that were once part of the TTC.

The department is still in talks with a private developer to construct toll roads and relief routes along U.S. 77 until it connects with Interstate 37 near Corpus Christi, Jorge said.

Those improvements could start as soon as environmental work is finished in 2010.

Jorge said the new plan doesn't abandon TxDOT's idea of a network of multiple modes of transportation spanning from the state's southern to northern borders.

But he said it is an acknowledgement that the Trans-Texas Corridor, in its original form, had become too polarizing to ever be built.

"(The idea) was lost from the beginning," Jorge said. "They saw that huge corridor and didn't see anything else."

Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4424.