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The NAFTA Super Highway eventually will link Canada and Mexico and Texas' portion of that highway will be an extensive, lengthy part of the overall picture. Although NAFTA and technology shakes up the labor market, it ends up giving us higher living standards as well as more and better job opportunities. The Texas Transportation Commission approved a development proposal Thursday for Interstate 69, a segment in the Trans-Texas Corridor toll road superhighway. Commissioners agreed to pursue a proposal by Zachry American Infrastructure and ACS Infrastructure that would develop the southern section of U.S. Highway 77 to interstate standards without tolling that part of the road. The companies want to build and operate $1.5 billion worth of toll roads in South Texas to generate money needed to develop the existing highway. The contract also would include the right of first negotiation for the joint company to perform some of the highway projects. Zachry American Infrastructure is part of the San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Corp. ACS Infrastructure Development Inc. is a Spanish firm.

The I-69 development proposal is innovative and would extend the interstate system into South Texas, Transportation Commission Chair Deirdre Delisi said. "This proposal moves us closer to building I-69/TTC," she said. "For two decades, (I-69) has been nothing more than a line on the map and a promise." Delisi said the road is important to the state's economic development. The private companies' proposal shows the project can be built "while minimizing the need to purchase additional land and only limited, innovative tolling," she said. The proposal calls for coordinating with local authorities in the Rio Grande Valley and the Corpus Christi area to develop South Texas toll roads. Those would help finance the initial segments of I-69 without requiring tolls to be collected along long stretches of highway extending north from Cameron County, Delisi said.