The Texas Observer

The State Auditor’s Office has found some huge holes in TXDOT’s grandiose plan to pave the state with a network of superhighways collectively known as the Trans-Texas Corridor.

TTC-35, the first leg of the network, will stretch from Oklahoma to the Mexican border. State auditors claim that stretch of pavement alone will cost $105 billion. Using that figure, the grassroots organization, Corridor Watch, calculates the entire network will cost a staggering $745 billion.

State auditors sampled 32 invoices connected with TTC-35 and found errors totaling $4.3 million on 21 of those invoices. The errors dealt mainly dealt with the misallocation of costs. But with the project still in its infancy, that’s not a comforting piece of news.

Although the TTC is being hawked to the public and lawmakers as a risk-free, entirely private venture, Texas taxpayers have already shelled out millions for environmental and engineering studies and could be on the hook for millions more.

The report also lays out some of the troubling aspects of the contract between TXDOT and its private partner, Cintra-Zachry. In addition to the much-discussed non-compete clause, TXDOT’s apparently going to have to foot the bill for the collection and enforcement of tolls. What’s more, it’s also going to have to reimburse Cintra-Zachry for all those toll revenues associated with “non-paying riders.”

After reading this report, lawmakers should be asking themselves who’s really getting the free ride.

by Eileen Welsome

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Texas Highways, You've Got to Be Kidding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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