Texas has been on a five-year winning streak in the Best Roads category in Overdrive‘s Highway Report Card survey, out this month (in the digital magazine, flip to p. 24). That doesn’t mean, however, that its high-traffic highway network hasn’t seen a disproportionate share of controversy in recent years. Just a couple days ago, though, the Texas Department of Transportation “>scrapped” the flash point for much of that controversy. The
And folks who see the U.S. on the road to a loss of sovereignty via a European Union-style joining of Canada, Mexico and the land in between, saw the TTC amid the immigration fears that have gripped borderlands and other areas as the first leg of the mythical NAFTA Superhighway, a prominent bugaboo of North American Union fearers I wrote about here, and which later got similar treatment the national political journal the Nation.
“>As TXDOT explains in the Vision 2009 plan … ‘The Trans-Texas Corridor name has taken on unintended meaning that can obscure the facts…. Instead, we will implement a corridor program that will house the tools of innovative project development and delivery springing from TTC events, but will use the names generally associated with individual projects.’ See? Isn’t that so much less obscure? We’re not building a ‘NAFTA Superhighway.’ We’re just building a few little toll roads to help the suburbs stretching from San Antonio to Dallas sprawl another few hundred miles eastward.”
And so a rose by any other name…
