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I always said this was going to lay in the weeds out of the public view....but it never died....
It's back: Texas in 'Super Highway' deal with Spain
Perry signs agreement 3 years after public opposition halted project
Published: 12 hours ago
by
Jerome R. Corsi
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/its-back-texas-in-super-highway-deal-with-spain/#LkiOmHfmITPSH4yV.99
NEW YORK – Believe it or not, the Trans-Texas Corridor is back.
Very quietly, Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, signed in October a comprehensive development agreement to construct a toll-road redevelopment of Interstate 35 north of downtown Fort Worth.
TxDOT signed the 50-year deal with NTE Mobility Partners Segments 3
LLC, a U.S.-based wholly-owned subsidiary of Cintra, the Spanish-owned
construction company. TxDOT picked Cintra in 2005 to build what some
critics called the “NAFTA Super Highway.”
Chris Lippincot, the former TxDOT information officer who is
currently acting as the new public relations man for Cintra in the
United States, also announced TxDOT signed a contract in September with Cintra to build a privatized State Highway 130 toll road in San Antonio.
Jerome Corsi’s “America for Sale” exposes the globalists’ effort to put America on the chopping block
Perry may never have abandoned his original idea to build what during
the presidential administration of George W. Bush was known as the
Trans-Texas Corridor project, a 4,000-mile network of privately built
and operated toll roads to crisscross the state, with Spanish
development company Cintra scheduled to earn the tolls under 50-year
leases.
In 2009, Perry scrapped the TTC plan after a series of combative town
hall meetings throughout the state showed TxDOT it faced massive
taxpayer resistance.
But now, the plan apparently is being implemented in small chunks,
without the fanfare of divulging a statewide blueprint Perry and TxDOT
may still have tucked away in their back pockets.
Was TTC ever really dead?
Operating below the radar of public opinion, Texas currently has $20
billion in roadwork underway through public-private partnerships,
according to Ted Houghton, TxDOT chairman, the Texas Tribune reported earlier this month.
Despite Perry’s pledge in 2009 to end the Trans-Texas Corridor
project with Cintra, TxDOT has kept the public-private partnership toll
road concept alive by proposing smaller projects for the approval of the
Texas state legislature.
Nicholas Rubio, the president of Cintra’s U.S. arm in Austin, told
the Texas Tribune that Cintra currently has contracts for three road
projects in Texas, consisting of approximately $5 billion in private
investment against about $1 billion in public subsidies.
“You have to recognize, in general, that policymakers in Texas have
been ahead of the curve,” Rubio told the Tribune. “The states that have
been developing P3s (public-private partnerships) are Texas, Florida,
Virginia, and that’s about it.”
In October, Perry and Rafael del Pino, chairman of Ferrovial,
Cintra’s parent company in Spain, attended the grand launch of a 41-mile
stretch of State Highway 130 P3 project between Austin and Sequin.
Texas owns the land on which the SH 130 P3 project is built, but a
private consortium owned and operated by Cintra is scheduled to build
the toll road. It’s to be operated under a 50-year lease, with Cintra
taking the lion’s share of the tolls collected over the next 50 years to
recover construction costs and to make a profit.
To make the SH 130 toll road palatable to Texas drivers, the speed
limit will be set to 85 miles per hour, the fastest posted limit in the
United States.
A look-back to the Bush era
Quietly but systematically, the Bush administration in conjunction
with Perry in Texas advanced the plan to build a huge highway, four
football fields wide, through the heart of Texas, parallel to Interstate
35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas, to the Texas border with
Oklahoma.
The Trans-Texas Corridor moved ahead to begin construction following the re-election of Perry in November 2006.
Plans to build TTC-35 were fully disclosed on KeepTexasMoving.org, a now defunct official TxDOT website.
On March 11, 2005, a “Comprehensive Development Agreement” was signed
by TxDOT to build the “TTC-35 High Priority Corridor” parallel to
Interstate 35.
The contracting party was a limited partnership formed between Cintra
Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., a
publically-listed company headquartered in Spain, majority controlled by
the Madrid-based Groupo Ferrovial, and a San Antonio-based construction
company, Zachry Construction Corporation.
The Cintra deal meant that once the TTC was completed, anyone who
wanted to drive on it would have to pay an investment consortium in
Spain for the privilege of driving in Texas.
Although somewhat incomprehensible to most U.S. citizens, these
public-private partnerships involve selling off key U.S. infrastructure
projects to foreign entities.
Granted, the “ownership” rights of projects like TTC-35 would have
remained with the state of Texas, yet selling off the leasing rights
amounts in the thinking of most U.S. citizens to selling off the highway
to foreign interests for the term of the lease.
Under the terms of the TTC agreements with TxDOT, Cintra would have
had the rights to operate TTC-35 for 50 years and to collect all tolls
on the road in that period of time.
The Comprehensive Development Agreement called for Cintra-Zachry to
provide private investment of $6 billion “to fully design, construct and
operate a four-lane, 316-mile toll road between Dallas and San Antonio
for up to 50 years as the initial segment of TTC-35.
For this, Cintra-Zachry paid the state of Texas $1.2 billion for the
long-term right to build and operate the initial segment as a toll
facility.
In April 2006, TxDOT released a 4,000-page Environmental Impact
Statement, or EIS, for what was described as the “Trans-Texas
Corridor-25 Oklahoma to Mexico/Gulf Coast Element.”
The April 2006 EIS made clear that Cintra-Zachry planned to build a
1,200-foot-wide (approximately four football fields wide) complex with
10 lanes of highway – five lanes in each direction, north and
south.Three lanes in each direction would be reserved for passenger
vehicles and two separate lanes reserved for trucks.
The EIS design included six rail lines running parallel to the
highway, with separate rail lines in each direction for high-speed rail,
commuter rail and freight rail.
Finally, the design called for a 200-foot wide utility corridor that
would include pipelines for oil, natural gas, water, telecommunications
and data, as well as electricity towers.
According to the TxDOT Trans-Texas Corridor Plan adopted in June
2002, TxDOT ultimately would build some 4,000 miles of
highway-railway-utility super-corridors throughout Texas over the next
50 years, using some 584,000 acres of what is now Texas farm and
ranchland, at an estimated cost of $184 billion.
The TTC plan left little doubt TTC toll-road super-corridors were
designed to facilitate international trade, primarily speeding trucks
and trains carrying “inter-modal” containers from Mexican ports to
destinations in the heartland of the U.S.
The full TTC build-out was designed to move goods through Texas rapidly, bypassing the major cities.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/its-back-texas-in-super-highway-deal-with-spain/#LkiOmHfmITPSH4yV.99
It's back: Texas in 'Super Highway' deal with Spain
Perry signs agreement 3 years after public opposition halted project
Published: 12 hours ago
by
Jerome R. Corsi
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/its-back-texas-in-super-highway-deal-with-spain/#LkiOmHfmITPSH4yV.99
NEW YORK – Believe it or not, the Trans-Texas Corridor is back.
Very quietly, Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, signed in October a comprehensive development agreement to construct a toll-road redevelopment of Interstate 35 north of downtown Fort Worth.
TxDOT signed the 50-year deal with NTE Mobility Partners Segments 3
LLC, a U.S.-based wholly-owned subsidiary of Cintra, the Spanish-owned
construction company. TxDOT picked Cintra in 2005 to build what some
critics called the “NAFTA Super Highway.”
Chris Lippincot, the former TxDOT information officer who is
currently acting as the new public relations man for Cintra in the
United States, also announced TxDOT signed a contract in September with Cintra to build a privatized State Highway 130 toll road in San Antonio.
Jerome Corsi’s “America for Sale” exposes the globalists’ effort to put America on the chopping block
Perry may never have abandoned his original idea to build what during
the presidential administration of George W. Bush was known as the
Trans-Texas Corridor project, a 4,000-mile network of privately built
and operated toll roads to crisscross the state, with Spanish
development company Cintra scheduled to earn the tolls under 50-year
leases.
In 2009, Perry scrapped the TTC plan after a series of combative town
hall meetings throughout the state showed TxDOT it faced massive
taxpayer resistance.
But now, the plan apparently is being implemented in small chunks,
without the fanfare of divulging a statewide blueprint Perry and TxDOT
may still have tucked away in their back pockets.
Was TTC ever really dead?
Operating below the radar of public opinion, Texas currently has $20
billion in roadwork underway through public-private partnerships,
according to Ted Houghton, TxDOT chairman, the Texas Tribune reported earlier this month.
Despite Perry’s pledge in 2009 to end the Trans-Texas Corridor
project with Cintra, TxDOT has kept the public-private partnership toll
road concept alive by proposing smaller projects for the approval of the
Texas state legislature.
Nicholas Rubio, the president of Cintra’s U.S. arm in Austin, told
the Texas Tribune that Cintra currently has contracts for three road
projects in Texas, consisting of approximately $5 billion in private
investment against about $1 billion in public subsidies.
“You have to recognize, in general, that policymakers in Texas have
been ahead of the curve,” Rubio told the Tribune. “The states that have
been developing P3s (public-private partnerships) are Texas, Florida,
Virginia, and that’s about it.”
In October, Perry and Rafael del Pino, chairman of Ferrovial,
Cintra’s parent company in Spain, attended the grand launch of a 41-mile
stretch of State Highway 130 P3 project between Austin and Sequin.
Texas owns the land on which the SH 130 P3 project is built, but a
private consortium owned and operated by Cintra is scheduled to build
the toll road. It’s to be operated under a 50-year lease, with Cintra
taking the lion’s share of the tolls collected over the next 50 years to
recover construction costs and to make a profit.
To make the SH 130 toll road palatable to Texas drivers, the speed
limit will be set to 85 miles per hour, the fastest posted limit in the
United States.
A look-back to the Bush era
Quietly but systematically, the Bush administration in conjunction
with Perry in Texas advanced the plan to build a huge highway, four
football fields wide, through the heart of Texas, parallel to Interstate
35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas, to the Texas border with
Oklahoma.
The Trans-Texas Corridor moved ahead to begin construction following the re-election of Perry in November 2006.
Plans to build TTC-35 were fully disclosed on KeepTexasMoving.org, a now defunct official TxDOT website.
On March 11, 2005, a “Comprehensive Development Agreement” was signed
by TxDOT to build the “TTC-35 High Priority Corridor” parallel to
Interstate 35.
The contracting party was a limited partnership formed between Cintra
Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., a
publically-listed company headquartered in Spain, majority controlled by
the Madrid-based Groupo Ferrovial, and a San Antonio-based construction
company, Zachry Construction Corporation.
The Cintra deal meant that once the TTC was completed, anyone who
wanted to drive on it would have to pay an investment consortium in
Spain for the privilege of driving in Texas.
Although somewhat incomprehensible to most U.S. citizens, these
public-private partnerships involve selling off key U.S. infrastructure
projects to foreign entities.
Granted, the “ownership” rights of projects like TTC-35 would have
remained with the state of Texas, yet selling off the leasing rights
amounts in the thinking of most U.S. citizens to selling off the highway
to foreign interests for the term of the lease.
Under the terms of the TTC agreements with TxDOT, Cintra would have
had the rights to operate TTC-35 for 50 years and to collect all tolls
on the road in that period of time.
The Comprehensive Development Agreement called for Cintra-Zachry to
provide private investment of $6 billion “to fully design, construct and
operate a four-lane, 316-mile toll road between Dallas and San Antonio
for up to 50 years as the initial segment of TTC-35.
For this, Cintra-Zachry paid the state of Texas $1.2 billion for the
long-term right to build and operate the initial segment as a toll
facility.
In April 2006, TxDOT released a 4,000-page Environmental Impact
Statement, or EIS, for what was described as the “Trans-Texas
Corridor-25 Oklahoma to Mexico/Gulf Coast Element.”
The April 2006 EIS made clear that Cintra-Zachry planned to build a
1,200-foot-wide (approximately four football fields wide) complex with
10 lanes of highway – five lanes in each direction, north and
south.Three lanes in each direction would be reserved for passenger
vehicles and two separate lanes reserved for trucks.
The EIS design included six rail lines running parallel to the
highway, with separate rail lines in each direction for high-speed rail,
commuter rail and freight rail.
Finally, the design called for a 200-foot wide utility corridor that
would include pipelines for oil, natural gas, water, telecommunications
and data, as well as electricity towers.
According to the TxDOT Trans-Texas Corridor Plan adopted in June
2002, TxDOT ultimately would build some 4,000 miles of
highway-railway-utility super-corridors throughout Texas over the next
50 years, using some 584,000 acres of what is now Texas farm and
ranchland, at an estimated cost of $184 billion.
The TTC plan left little doubt TTC toll-road super-corridors were
designed to facilitate international trade, primarily speeding trucks
and trains carrying “inter-modal” containers from Mexican ports to
destinations in the heartland of the U.S.
The full TTC build-out was designed to move goods through Texas rapidly, bypassing the major cities.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/its-back-texas-in-super-highway-deal-with-spain/#LkiOmHfmITPSH4yV.99
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