The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports (link dead) that TXDOT has released a 1600-page master plan for the Trans-Texas Corridor, The road (link dead) would roughly parallel I-35 from the Oklahoma-Texas border to San Antonio. The TTC will form the southern end of the NAFTA Corridor.

The project is a gold mine for anyone affiliated with Cintra Zachry, a collaboration of Zachry Construction Corporation, Spanish road management company CINTRA (Google Translate), and other firms:

Total cost of designing and building the corridor would be $8.8 billion, up from previous estimates of $7.2 billion. Private companies would pay that cost, plus fees totaling $1.9 billion, in exchange for the right to collect tolls for 50 years. The state Transportation Department would use the money on other work.

Of course, the federal government is involved:

While it’s considered a privately funded project, a third of the road construction and design costs — about $3.2 billion — would be in the form of federal transportation loans. The federal government would be repaid over 35 years, with interest.

The $3.2 billion would double the number of projects funded by Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loans since Congress created the program in 1998.

The gift keeps on giving:

Cintra Zachry will keep a special relationship with the (Texas) Transportation Department for years to come. The state paid the company $3.5 million for the master plan, and it awarded Cintra Zachry a $1.4 billion contract to build a portion of the corridor near Austin.

They also to get to revise the master plan yearly, for a yet-to-be-determined fee. Cintra Zachry also wants exclusive rights to build a rail line around Fort Worth and a highway loop around both Dallas and Fort Worth.

In Texas, they do everything big. Land grabs, government contracts, you name it. $8.8 billion is the present-day estimate. That a lot of money that could be put to other uses or not collected from taxpayers in the first place.