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Some Answers for Rural Texans About the Trans-Texas Corridor
10/24/2007
Texans are engaged in an ongoing conversation about toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor system (TTC). The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is listening and working to solve the long-term mobility issues facing our state.
Rural communities and agricultural interests are actively participating in this conversation and have raised many thoughtful questions. TxDOT offers answers to some of these questions below.
Q. It looks like the Trans-Texas Corridor will benefit businesses and congested cities but I don’t see much for rural counties. How do we benefit?
A. Whether it is a direct or indirect benefit, local communities, citizens and businesses will benefit from the Trans-Texas Corridor. An improved transportation system provides more options to get around, less congestion, more reliability, new economic development and more jobs.
More rural areas will be competitive for manufacturing and distribution facilities once these areas are served by the new corridor. These new facilities will provide more jobs for rural Texans who would otherwise have to leave the community to seek employment. TTC corridors will also provide a more competitive transportation system (both truck and rail) for moving agricultural products.
Q. What is the public need for such a wide right of way? Why 1,200 feet for these corridors?
A. The width of the corridor will vary depending upon need. Transportation planners struggle every day trying to squeeze more traffic into highway right of way that cannot be practically widened. A key objective in Trans-Texas Corridor planning is to provide future generations with adequate right of way and appropriate bridge designs to allow additional capacity to be built as it is needed. While detailed corridor design is still in the future, it is clear that in many areas the corridor will be narrower. 1,200 feet will allow room for roadway, rail lines, power lines and pipelines. In some locations, putting all these modes of transportation next to each other will not be feasible and less right of way may be needed. In some areas where highway improvements are not expected to be toll viable, highway upgrades may be paid for in part with revenue from utility or freight lines within the corridor.
Q. Doesn’t this project create an unreasonable burden on rural communities that have to reroute roads and may have lower property values for tax purposes?
A. TxDOT is responsible for restoring the useful function of city or county roads intersecting the corridor and for funding and construction of bridges built across the corridor to connect city or county roads. Decisions on how and where to best do this will be made in consultation with city and county officials. Financial feasibility, connectivity, access and traffic volume will all be part of these decisions.
Where the corridor is the full 1,200 feet wide it will require about 145 acres of right of way for each mile in length. That property, much of it undeveloped, will be removed from the local tax base permanently. However, some property in the vicinity of the corridor will increase in value because of proximity to the new transportation infrastructure. Taxpaying businesses and other development will occur near the corridor and along the improved connectors leading traffic to and from the corridor. In most cases, these properties will bring in greater tax revenues than undeveloped property.
Q. Farm and ranch operations get vital revenue from utility and pipeline easements. Why is the state setting out to compete with landowners in this market?
A. The intent of the legislature in establishing the TTC was to address mobility and right of way problems now and in the future – not to compete with the state’s rural landowners. Finding corridors for the state’s network of natural gas and petroleum pipelines, water supply lines, telecommunications and electric transmission lines will become increasingly difficult as population density increases in the future. The TTC corridor segments will provide just one more avenue. Relocating pipelines and utilities so that existing highways can be expanded has always been an expensive process. Creating a planned fairway in the corridor for these important elements will reduce the need to move them in the future.
Q. Why isn’t TxDOT working more closely with local governments in selecting routes that would cause the least amount of disruption in rural areas?
A. Local officials and transportation planning groups are part of the decision making process. As we get a narrowed study area approved local officials will become even more engaged because we will be coordinating connections to the local system.
Q. Cutting farm and ranch operations in two will devalue the divided pieces and create unreasonable hardships. Can such fragmentation be avoided?
A. TxDOT will work to select final route alignments that travel along property lines rather than dividing properties. Where that is not practical, TxDOT is required to offer to purchase a remaining tract if it has little or no value to the owner. The department must pay the owner damages on the remainder of the property caused by cutting it in two, including damages caused by the inaccessibility of one tract to the other. Property owners may build alternative access between severed tracts subject to TxDOT approval.
Q. What is the process for buying property for the Trans-Texas Corridor?
A. Right-of-way acquisition will not start until after project environmental review is finished and route alignment has received federal approval. TxDOT will use the same well-established process for right-of-way acquisition it uses on all projects. TxDOT has not been given any additional authority to acquire land for a TTC project. After right-of-way maps are assembled, a representative of the state will contact and meet with the property owner. An independent appraisal will be prepared and an effort will be made to negotiate an agreed amount of compensation taking all factors into account. If there is no negotiated settlement, the property owner can go to district court, which will decide compensation.
