10.08.09
It’s time for truth and leadership on transportation in Texas
The problem from the beginning with the TTC was not that it was an ambitious plan for transportation. The problem was that it was a secret plan, devised by the governor, TxDOT, and corporations, without the input of Texans, and then forced upon us. It was a text book case of how government should not be done.
- Via EOW earlier in the week
As TxDOT Executive Director Amadeo Saenz and Transportation Commissioner Ted Houghton took the heat yesterday and supposedly “took one for the team”, all they really did was finally admit what most everyone else has known for a while (see above). And Houghton in the video below, (Via BOR), says it best.
It took them 7 years to admit this, which was blatantly obvious by the Summer of 2005.
The Trans-Texas Corridor was initially pitched in 2002 as an innovative way to pay for up to $184 billion in new infrastructure. But by 2006 the proposal had spawned opposition across a diverse political landscape in Texas.
Some residents worried about foreign-owned companies taking over Texas roads. Others feared the loss of private property for toll-road right of way. And there were those who disagreed in principle with the widespread use of tolls to pay for highways.
But the Transportation Department’s biggest mistake was alienating landowners along the proposed I-35 reliever route, Houghton said. He poked fun at the critics, including toll-road opponents, anti-immigrant groups and those who thought the Trans-Texas Corridor was part of a conspiracy to create a new North American Union.
But property owners along the proposed route, he said, “had a legitimate gripe.”
“The one I have affection for and really listen to are the landowners,” Houghton said. “By the blue line on that map, we tainted that property, and we didn’t really understand that until we got out in those regions and listened to those folks.” [Emphasis added]
That last quote is the admission that they never even asked the landowners about the route, and how they would feel having their land – in may cases land that had been in families for generations – paved over, until this plan was already well down the road. That is the height of arrogance.
The main unanswered question in all of this is what do we do now? Who is going to step up and lead on transportation infrastructure in Texas? A warning to everyone, if someone puts forth a plan without a was to raise revenue in it – meaning a tax increase of some kind – then they’re planning on running a toll scam.
We can’t get something for nothing, sooner or later the taxpayers of Texas will have to pay for transportation, if that’s what we want. A real leader will tell us that.