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Road Warrior: if Ric Williamson is so smart--and he is--why is he letting the Trans-Texas Corridor take a toll on his reputation?

Article Excerpt
Since I started this, Ric Williamson said, referring to his six-year tenure on the Texas Transportation Commission, "I've had two heart attacks, and I'm trying to avoid the third one, which the doctors tell me will be fatal." Imagine yourself as the most hated person in Texas, public enemy number one to a million or more people, the object of vitriol wherever you go, with sc arc ely a friend in the Legislature, and you will have a pretty good idea of what life is like these days for the man who conceived and executed the most controversial public policy to come out of Austin in my lifetime: the Trans-Texas Corridor.

The Corridor, if anyone needs reminding, is a plan to relieve congestion on major highways--Interstates 10, 35, and 45 and U.S. 59 (soon to become Interstate 69)--by allowing private companies to bid for the right to build and operate toll roads. These routes, which will include rail lines for freight and commuter travel and, possibly, pipelines and electric transmission lines, will cut a wide swath through rural Texas, severing farms and ranches. At the same time, regional transportation planners will be building toll roads as well, many of which will be privatized. These are not really part of the Corridor, but the distinction is lost on the public. If you set out to do it, you could not devise a more unpopular plan. Rural Texans hate what it will do to their land. Urban Texans hate having to choose between free roads that are choked with traffic or paying to get to work every day. Lawmakers hate that concession payments in the billions of dollars...

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