Trans-Texas Corridor Part of Larger Plan

[KennethColeSRG]

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway

by Jerome R. Corsi

Posted Jun 12, 2006

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn....

Link to full article....

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15497

[Dominax]

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway

by Jerome R. Corsi

Posted Jun 12, 2006

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn....

Link to full article....

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15497

If they are building the freeway how many lanes

are they rebuilding I-35 how long will this take!!!!

[houstonmacbro]

and the point.

[dbigtex56]

This will have an effect on the Port of Houston. How much remains to be seen.

[TheNiche]

Bush Administration Quietly Plans NAFTA Super Highway

by Jerome R. Corsi

Posted Jun 12, 2006

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn....

Link to full article....

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15497

Honestly, I'd question the credibility of the article. Just because there appears to be interest by some special interest groups (noticed H. Ross Perot's AllianceTexas has its own city designation in addition to Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denton ) doesn't mean that anything like this is actually in the works.

Frankly, the economics of logistical operations would require that for such a project to be feasible, everything must be moved by rail carrier on bidirectional dedicated trackage with major intermodal terminals at about 750-mile increments (on account of that shipments made within about 400 miles rarely make sense except by truck). Roadway requirements are relatively few except that they branch outward around major intermodal terminals. They don't necessarily need to always follow the railroad right of way, either.

The midwest route certainly carries the greatest benefit, but if it were implemented, they'd need to lay two sets of bidirectional tracks up until about Dallas and then have one set go toward Atlanta and then up the eastern seaboard. That's the best way to get Asian goods to the most populous and heretofore inconvenient U.S. markets under this plan.

All this being said, there's no point in doing any of this if we can just get the Panama Canal widened, as is presently planned (for real). Freight shipments are far less expensive per mile if they can be transported by a water route, and the Post-Panamax vessels (which have the lowest-cost-per-container-mile travelled) can only access the gulf or eastern seaboards by sailing through the Suez Canal or rounding the tip of South America.

[pineda]

toll road rates unpredictable in the future

Cintra gets the contract, no big surprise there

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security, said the Cintra deal includes provisions that bar the state from building its own roads in the area during the 50-year contract.

Brilliant work they do in Austin! Is this the best they can do, honestly?

[houstonfella]

Any news on I-69 corridor? It seems that I-35 gets all the attention.

[CDeb]

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security, said the Cintra deal includes provisions that bar the state from building its own roads in the area during the 50-year contract.

I believe that is a mischaracterization.

[Pumapayam]

and the point.

From what I read, it will just be another way to steal jobs from the US.

It is designed to bring in goods from the East, (China) and use non union labor worker to by employeed at docks and trucking (Mexico)

This is stupid and a huge land grab.

And to top it off, it will be tolled, jeez!

[GovernorAggie]

toll road rates unpredictable in the future

Cintra gets the contract, no big surprise there

Brilliant work they do in Austin! Is this the best they can do, honestly?

California did this in the past (SR-91) and ended up regretting it. They paid some huge amount of money to buy a parallel toll road from a private company b/c of those same stipulations of no area road improvements.

[desirous]

Ann Coulter is plastered all over the site. By deduction, the site is probably incapable of voicing intelligent opinions in the first place. Don't worry, folks.

I-69 should wait. US59 through downtown can't handle it.

[westguy]

An inland port. What?

[pineda]

I believe that is a mischaracterization.

please explain.

[CDeb]

please explain.

Now, I could be wrong because this CDA could be different from the CDA for the new tollway near Austin. But my understanding of the non-compete agreement between the state and the builder is that road projects in the zone of influence work like a bank balance. The state gets credit for projects that would serve to bring traffic to the toll road (such as a connecting roadway) and it gets debited for projects that would take traffic away from it (such as a parallel highway).

So to say that the state can't build any roads in the area is a mischaracterization of the CDA.

[pineda]

CDeb-

Do you know if Cintra is involved in the CDA in Austin?

[CDeb]

CDeb-

Do you know if Cintra is involved in the CDA in Austin?

This is where my memory is fuzzy. I THOUGHT they were being brought in to build the southern portion of SH 130 (US183 to IH10), but I'm not sure.

[mrfootball]

Treasonous.

We should jail each and every one of our elected officials who are attempting to circumvent the system to create this "North American Union" which will undoubtedly threaten our sovereignty. There's another hand at play here and its not a nice one.

[urban909]

Treasonous.

We should jail each and every one of our elected officials who are attempting to circumvent the system to create this "North American Union" which will undoubtedly threaten our sovereignty. There's another hand at play here and its not a nice one.

they only reason i would think that a north american union is being created is because of the threat of china's economy. the rate at which it is growing, it is going to overtake japan in 5-10 years and the US in about 15-20. and i don't believe, seeing that there have been meetings between Canada, US, and Mexico's leaders, that this is very real. and, as a side note, i don't believe any EU countries (just focusing on the original ones) have lost any of their identity or real sovereignty. then again i don't know the politics of the EU that well. the whole reason the EU was created was to compete globally with the US. now that china and even india pose a real threat, N.America might be feeling the pressure to do the same. just my two cents...

[Pumapayam]

they only reason i would think that a north american union is being created is because of the threat of china's economy. the rate at which it is growing, it is going to overtake japan in 5-10 years and the US in about 15-20. and i don't believe, seeing that there have been meetings between Canada, US, and Mexico's leaders, that this is very real. and, as a side note, i don't believe any EU countries (just focusing on the original ones) have lost any of their identity or real sovereignty. then again i don't know the politics of the EU that well. the whole reason the EU was created was to compete globally with the US. now that china and even india pose a real threat, N.America might be feeling the pressure to do the same. just my two cents...

So the Chinese work ethics are evil, they just work for too cheap, they need to get some dignity back!

[TheNiche]

they only reason i would think that a north american union is being created is because of the threat of china's economy. the rate at which it is growing, it is going to overtake japan in 5-10 years and the US in about 15-20. and i don't believe, seeing that there have been meetings between Canada, US, and Mexico's leaders, that this is very real. and, as a side note, i don't believe any EU countries (just focusing on the original ones) have lost any of their identity or real sovereignty. then again i don't know the politics of the EU that well. the whole reason the EU was created was to compete globally with the US. now that china and even india pose a real threat, N.America might be feeling the pressure to do the same. just my two cents...

So, why would anyone want a unified N. America? Honestly, why should anyone feel threatened by China?

They're growing and slowly becoming more prosperous. Good for them.

[desirous]

So, why would anyone want a unified N. America? Honestly, why should anyone feel threatened by China?

They're growing and slowly becoming more prosperous. Good for them.

Precisely. It's easy to forget the double standard that we enforce upon the rest of the world. We have troops in Japan, Korea, and Central Asia. What if China has troops in Mexico, Cuba, and Canada? What if a Chinese spy plane landed in California, instead of ours having landed over there? The old argument was that we embody freedom, and espouse human rights; the past few years have evaporated our moral high ground. Pity, no?

[TheNiche]

Precisely. It's easy to forget the double standard that we enforce upon the rest of the world. We have troops in Japan, Korea, and Central Asia. What if China has troops in Mexico, Cuba, and Canada? What if a Chinese spy plane landed in California, instead of ours having landed over there? The old argument was that we embody freedom, and espouse human rights; the past few years have evaporated our moral high ground. Pity, no?

Well if China deployed troops to Mexico, Cuba, and Canada, that'd be a whole other matter. This thread is about economic growth, not militarism.

[pineda]

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, who pushed the 2003 bill that helped set up the toll road initiative, said he was "asleep or not smart enough" to recognize potential problems.

Very surprised that Ogden openly admits this, especially considering he was the Chair at the time.

[Pumapayam]

Well if China deployed troops to Mexico, Cuba, and Canada, that'd be a whole other matter. This thread is about economic growth, not militarism.

And that they work for so cheap!

[westguy]

China's very militaristic. They can blow up our satellites now.

[TheNiche]

China's very militaristic. They can blow up our satellites now.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around how they'd do that. Unless they just launched a few nuclear missiles into space and let the EMP take out both theirs and ours indiscriminately, there would seem to be pretty severe constraints on the physics of such attacks. It wouldn't surprise me if they could take out a few satellites before we crippled their command and control infrastructure, but it doesn't seem plausible that they could really hit us all at once.

Can you provide a source?

[Justin]

I don't have a source, but there was something in the news about them using a missile to shoot down an old weather satellite of theirs as a test a few weeks back.

[desirous]

China's very militaristic. They can blow up our satellites now.

We can blow up theirs too, ya know. We can blow up them, for that matter. Sounds like we're the "militaristic" ones. That's exactly the double standard I spoke of. When a country is half as dangerous as we are, they're considered a threat. :chuckle:

[TheNiche]

We can blow up theirs too, ya know. We can blow up them, for that matter. Sounds like we're the "militaristic" ones. That's exactly the double standard I spoke of. When a country is half as dangerous as we are, they're considered a threat. :chuckle:

It is kind of interesting, though, because it seems that in the 21st century, the more that a country has the capacity to be dangerous, the less dangerous it actually is. Notice that the developing 3rd world is pretty tame, even among large economies like China and India, and that they aren't likely to risk a military engagement (even against a lesser country) because it'd throw their economy out of whack. That doesn't mean that they stop all military spending, and they shouldn't be expected to, but they aren't taking an overtly offense posture.

It is the poorest and most undeveloped third world countries that pose the greatest military risks because 1) they don't have much to lose, and 2) the governments are weak or inherently unstable with few checks on power. Take N. Korea as an example. Their economy is pathetic, and over a third of its GDP is devoted purely to military spending...meanwhile, its people often starve.

[desirous]

It is kind of interesting, though, because it seems that in the 21st century, the more that a country has the capacity to be dangerous, the less dangerous it actually is. Notice that the developing 3rd world is pretty tame, even among large economies like China and India, and that they aren't likely to risk a military engagement (even against a lesser country) because it'd throw their economy out of whack. That doesn't mean that they stop all military spending, and they shouldn't be expected to, but they aren't taking an overtly offense posture.

It is the poorest and most undeveloped third world countries that pose the greatest military risks because 1) they don't have much to lose, and 2) the governments are weak or inherently unstable with few checks on power. Take N. Korea as an example. Their economy is pathetic, and over a third of its GDP is devoted purely to military spending...meanwhile, its people often starve.

Check out this link, it sheds some interesting light on the change in societal attitudes toward violence. Traditional theories regarding the definition of threats is outdated in today's global economy.

About the topic - there's nothing fundamentally wrong with building highways. The problem lies in ignoring the urgent needs of cities for infrastructure upgrades, by simply bypassing them altogether. I remember that Interstate 35 is wider in Georgetown and New Braunfels than in Austin, for example.