Central Texas Corridor Designated As Future Interstate

"Government land grab to steal peoples land for the benefit of developers. " you understand that's how this always works and that Texas (as do every state) appropriately compensate for the land right? Texas wouldn't be as prosperous today without our state highways, and using its right to take land for best interest of the public (try to imagine having to take a 200+ mile detour to get from Austin to Dallas because of people not selling there land). You also do understand who controls transit within the cities borders right? It's the cities themselves. The state does not work on infrastructure within cities, the cities themselves do this with the sales tax dollars earned within the city. In the state of Texas you have three forms of sale tax, State, County, and City. Each one take a percentage of the sale tax people pay and that's how infrastructure is paid for. That's why you can have a pristine interstate highway like HWY-6 example but you have cities like Calvert and Marlin where their own roads have gone to rubble. Also Texas has one of the best roads both city and state in the country. Also mass transit systems to cover Texas (which is bigger than all European countries) is highly expensive and Texas being a low tax/low maintenance state we really cannot do so especially because in our state constitution we have to balance out the budget and not go into debt. Also on that note Texas is working on a mass transit to connect the major cities together. It has always been shown highways and especially in Texas if you build highways connecting different cities that have different businesses all will grow and this will better our state. (Example is the speed rail connecting DFW (financial center in Texas) to Houston (Oil) to Austin (Tech) will allow businesses to work together more efficiently and we will see a significant increase in jobs and economic growth (which Texas has always had one of the lowest unemployment rates and didn't get hit hard during the 2008 recession comparatively to other states). Not trying to belittle what you're saying because I understand your concern, however. This is just not the case and saying highways do not help form economic growth is simply not true.

/r/texas Thread Parent Link - kwtx.com