The Trans-Texas Corridor is the creation of Texas Governor Rick Perry.

In 2002 Governor Perry announced his Corridor vision and instructed TxDOT to prepare an action plan to build the Trans-Texas Corridor. Within six-months TxDOT had completed the plan and presented it to the Transportation Commission. Without any substantive discussion or debate and without public comment the Commission approved the plan as presented on June 27, 2002.  [the plan]

"Once the Governor decided that this is where we needed to head, he wanted to remove it from the political flow of the state, he wanted it to become policy as opposed to politics, and that was one of the reasons he asked us to move so fast, and we've done an admirable job...."
— Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson (June 27, 2002) [full text]

"The Trans-Texas Corridor plan is not the product of transportation professionals, urban planners, sociologists and environmentalists hammering out affordable infrastructure to meet our 21st Century needs. Rather, it was hatched in a smoke-filled room where nobody worried about the needs of ordinary Texans."
— Dick Kallerman, Transportation Issue Coordinator, Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter [more]

Excerpts from comments of Transportation Commissioner Ric Williamson while addressing the House Transportation Committee about legislation intended to create the Trans Texas Corridor.  March 25, 2003.

"Governor Perry and his friends spent a great deal of time researching ideas to create more revenue, to decrease the cost of doing business and to deliver services to Texans as fast and as cheap as possible.

Four ideas were particularly interesting to Governor Perry.

First was the idea of using toll debt to build new highways in the state.

Second was the idea of building a high speed rail system connecting Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Houston.

Third was the idea of using total project delivery, sometimes called turn key or design build or exclusive development agreement, as a contract process for building highways.

And fourth was the idea of creating an additional source of revenue to finance transportation projects in the future. " [citation]

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"Shortly after the session ended in 2001 Governor Perry began to outline his vision for a modern transportation system which would anticipate and avoid some of the transportation problems of the future. Immediately after toll equity was approved by the voters, Governor Perry asked the Texas Transportation Commission to create a plan to use toll equity and the laws you passed last session to establish new policy for building in our state the transportation system of the future.

In creating the plan Governor Perry directed the Commission to focus on the following:

One: The revenue necessary to pay for the system would have to be user fee driven as much as possible.

Two: The private sector would have to be given maximum opportunity to be a partner with the state in financing, building and operating the system.

Three: The system would include rail for both consumers and business.

Four: The first segments of the system would have to relieve traffic congestion in urban Texas.

Five: The system would have to divert hazardous material away from the most populated areas of the state.

Six: The system would have to create the opportunity to bring competitive utility service to less developed areas of the  state.

Seven: The system would have to create the opportunity to improve air quality in urban Texas.

Eight: The system would have to aggressively promote economic opportunity in the less developed parts of our state.

Nine: The system would have to provide a stable source of revenue for transportation projects of the future.

Ten: The system could never prevent a Texas citizen from using an alternate tax supported state highway to travel across the state.

With those criteria the Commission and Department employees set about the task of describing how we would create a multi modal fee driven network of public corridors which would serve the interests of all Texans over the next 100 years.

Thus was born the Trans Texas Corridor." [citation]