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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
TTC developer will be selected this week
One of the giant elephants in the room has been who will build the highway. As we’ve written about before, lots of folks are concerned about Cintra, a Spanish toll road developer, winning the bid, due to fears about foreign control and national pride.
Well, the issue will come to a head this week, when state transportation commissioners will read and select a company to build the project. Here’s the agenda item for Thursday’s meeting:
Act on the recommendation of department staff concerning:
(1) the selection of the best value proposal for the planning, development,
acquisition, design, construction, financing, maintenance, and operation of the
element of the Trans-Texas Corridor System from Northeast Texas to the
Texas/Mexico border (I-69/TTC); and (2) the execution of a comprehensive
development agreement for I-69/TTC
Some of the back room politicking involved in the selection — including the role of Rudy Guiliani — has been noted in the pages of Vanity Fair.
TexasTURF has written about this, as has corridor watch, with both organization criticizing the transportation agency for sneakily avoiding the restrictions of SB 792, which places a moratorium on the construction of new toll roads in Texas until 2009.
In advance of the decision Thursday, Eye on the Road took a minute to talk to Amadeo Saenz, TxDOT’s executive director, about awarding the contract, during a recent press conference in Lufkin. He talked about the bid process, what he hopes to see in them, and when details will be made public. Below is the audio-only interview hosted by YouTube. Click here for direct download (.wav).
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Nietzsche and the Trans Texas Corridor
When Eye On the Road blogged about Senator Ogden’s “The TTC is dead” comment in April, TexsTURF and other groups claimed it was an attempt to sabotage their march on the state capitol.
Now the group has changed their tune, crediting Ogden for giving citizens a heads up when his comment “let the cat out of the bag.”
What’s really wacky, though, is the philosophical parallel that accompanies this tete-a-tete. When the philosopher Nietzsche made a similar comment about God, it too, was hijacked and re-purposed for various purposes, endlessly re-construed by postmodernists and atheists alike. But the scholars always said it wasn’t literal, it was conceptual. Interesting how it’s now the very concept of a TTC that Turf says is moribund.
It’s fair to say the debate over financing the TTC will be the next big battle in the war over the corridor. Without getting in too deep about dueling identities and the relative nature of evil, I’ll close with these words of inspiration:
Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one. — Nietzsche
