10.27.08

Just because Craddick said the TTC is dead doesn’t make it so

Posted in Around The State, Bad Government Republicans, Election 2008, Privatization, Road Issues, Transportation at 9:09 am by wcnews

Ben Wear at the AAS today fleshes out Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick’s recent statement decreeing the death of the Trans-Texas Corridor, Is Trans-Texas Corridor a dead issue?

“Everybody in Austin knows it’s dead. Everybody across the state knows it’s dead. It’s just something to be talking about.”

— Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, Oct. 19, 2008

At first Ben Wear thought he had missed the funeral for the TTC but it turns out Craddick’s message depends on the the definition of “it” is.

Turns out that accurately interpreting Craddick’s words depends on the meaning of “it” and the definition of “dead.”

I called Craddick’s office and got his spokeswoman, Alexis DeLee, on the phone. So, I asked, are TTC-35 and I-69 dead? Is that what the speaker was saying? Because if so, then TxDOT, which has agency employees, consultants and two private toll road consortiums working on various environmental and engineering plans for both roads, is wasting a lot of money.

“We’re not getting into I-69,” DeLee said, adding that I-69 wasn’t in the Trans-Texas Corridor plan. She didn’t want to talk about TTC-35 much either. “The comment he made was about the Trans-Texas Corridor as it relates to its original plan laid out by Ric Williamson. And that is dead.”

[...]

Here’s the deal: Rural folks, including those in Craddick’s district, hate the Trans-Texas Corridor. So Craddick was selling what people at that debate were raring to buy. And the truth is that in the six years since Perry’s announcement, TxDOT hasn’t lifted a finger to work on most of the lines on that corridor map. Who needs parallel tollways to roads like I-10 and I-20 with sparse traffic? No one.

And the railroad and utility aspects of the corridor plan have gone nowhere as well.

So, yes, overall, the Perry/Williamson Trans-Texas Corridor is dead.

But two pieces of it — TTC-35 and I-69 — the proposed tollways that have roiled Texas for three or four years, are very much alive. So hold off on sending flowers

In other words this overall plan of an interconnected tollway system throughout the state that includes rail and utilities is dead. But the TTC 35 and TTC 69 toll ways are still in the works. Dead is in the eye of the beholder.

ACRETexas blog has much more reaction on this from Texas TURF‘s Terri Hall:

TERRI HALL, San Antonio Toll Party and TURF
“Craddick’s comments are no more true than saying the sun won’t rise tomorrow. This is an election year, period. NO law has been changed or policies reversed to prove this statement correct. In fact, they’ve gone underground and are cheating in how they’re supplementing the environmental record to make it appear they’ll use existing right of way for TTC-69 using clever language rife with get of jail free cards. Also, TTC-35 is barreling forward unabated.

“It’s huge he [Craddick] even feels the need to say it to get re-elected!”

Craddick and his minions, of which Bryan Daniel is one, are trying to distance themselves from this in any way they can. But it’s a GOP problem, and they can’t spin their way out of it. Anyone who thinks this statement means a parallel toll roads to I-35 and I-69 are no longer in the works if fooling themselves. Only a check on GOP power can stop these roads and that means Democratic control of the Texas House.

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