The Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, is now moving to apply its four-football-fields-wide NAFTA superhighway plan of building new train-truck-car-pipeline corridors to the states of Oklahoma and Colorado in a design that stretches from the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas, to Denver, Colo.
The concept is for the states of Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado to apply the TTC toll road concept first developed by TxDOT for the more urban routes parallel to Interstate 35 (TTC-35) and along the route of Interstate 69 (TTC-69) into the largely rural areas along the Ports-to-Plains Corridor, creating what TxDOT calls "Rural Trans-Texas Corridors."
To advance this plan, the Ports-to-Plains Trade Corridor Coalition, a trade association sponsored by the consulates of Mexico and Canada, along with the TxDOT and the Colorado Department of Transportation, is co-sponsoring a "Great Plains 2007" international conference scheduled to be held at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Denver Sept. 19-21, 2007.
The conference brochure recommends that the confab be attended by real estate developers, transportation planners, highway services business executives, as well as state, local, county, and municipal public officials and international trade professionals.
An April 2007 TxDOT study on the Ports-to-Plains Trade Corridor Coalition website documents the tie between the two groups.
The study acknowledges that the Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC, initiative begun by Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2002 has so far focused on building new NAFTA superhighways parallel to Interstate 35 (TTC-35) and along the Interstate 69 corridor (TTC-69).
"Since its inception more than a decade ago, the Coalition, in partnership with TxDOT, has successfully developed a system of four-lane divided highways to enhance trade and safety," the TxDOT study says. "While some portions of the highway corridor are still in need of improvement, the Coalition is examining other multimodal transportation needs as it moves forward."
Proposed Ports-to-Plains Corridor
The study then argues the Ports-to-Plains Corridor offers an opportunity to apply the TTC technology to NAFTA superhighway development in rural settings....