Near the end of this article on the Trans Texas Corridor comes an observation about the 2006 elections.
I’ve whined a lot that the biggest cost of sprawl is the opportunity cost – the value of the things we didn’t, or now can’t, do with the land and the money trampled under the path of least resistance. The Trans Texas Corridor is just not a very good investment of resources we can better use doing something else.
This highlights a need for a real progressive strategy for dealing with roads – beyond saying they all suck. This does little to help the multitudes who are not fiscally or physically fortunate enough to afford central-city housing or get to work by human-powered transport. It also prompts the Other Side into taking the binary position, wrapping itself around the most ridiculous ideas like the Trans Texas Corridor, because after all, the only people who don’t like roads are those crazy hippies.
Obviously that’s not true in this case, but progressives are ill-served having to rely on, say, the Texas Farm Bureau to bail them out. A better, more sustainable alliance would be – duh! – with the other urbanites along I-35, such as Dallas Mayor Laura Miller, who have little use for either the corridor or Perry and Ric Williamson, and (in Miller’s case) have little political impetus not to say so. Miller’s been tapped as a potential statewide candidate in 2006, which hints at a salient point: Whoever carries the Dem banner against the winner of the Rick-and-Kay-and-Carole cage match needs to be running against the Trans Texas Corridor and the highway ho-ho-hos. Who’s got the last laugh now?
Laura Miller has some baggage to overcome as a statewide candidate, but the overall point is valid: the TTC does nothing to help cities, and the big urban counties are trending Democratic, so it makes sense for a politician with an urban base to get out in front of this.
The rural aspect of this shouldn’t be overlooked, however. The Corridor Watch page is loaded with quotes from rural citizens and officials that run the gamut from concern over the impact of the TTC on rural communities to outright panic. Convincing these folks that the TTC is a clear indication of Governor Perry’s lack of concern for their way of life would be a pretty good way to possibly peel some votes out of a Republican stronghold. We’re not going to win in 2006 on cities and South Texas alone. We need some people to switch sides, and I think this is an issue that could be persuasive.
The TTC encapsulates just about everything that’s wrong with the Perry administration: Whacked-out fiscal priorities, so-called solutions that don’t actually solve real problems, Tammany Hall tendencies, and power as an end unto itself. The more noise we make about it now, the better.