Meeting Texas Infrastructure Needs in the Face of a Burgeoning Population and Declining Tax Revenues: The Trans-Texas Corridor

This comment addresses innovative alternatives for financing the state’s roadway infrastructure needs, in the face of tax revenues waning and the demand for transportation infrastructure proliferating. First, it covers the intended purposes of the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), as envisioned by the TxDOT—to increase safety, improve traffic flow, and to facilitate economic development. Next, it analyzes the positions of those who argue that the TTC is the wrong solution to Texas’s transportation issues. It provides a legislative background before discussing the alternative methods that the TxDOT has pursued as it begins to plan and construct the TTC. Lastly, it discusses the available financing for the TTC with the State Highway fund, the State Infrastructure Bank, and the Texas Mobility Fund; and how these sources are insufficient to support the projected growth of the state’s population in the coming years.