Due to massive public opposition to the highway expansion plan known as the Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has pulled a classic maneuver to undercut the resistance: keep the project, but change the name.

“The Trans-Texas Corridor, as a single project concept, is not the choice of Texans. So we’ve decided to put the name to rest,” said Texas Department of Transportation Executive Director Amadeo Saenz. “That does not mean that we will abdicate our mission.”

The TTC is part of a massive plan to reduce freight traffic (and thereby increase trade with Mexico) with 4,000 miles of new and expanded roads, including toll roads. Most notorious is the “Northeast Texas to Mexico corridor,” part of the planned I-69 NAFTA Superhighway from Canada to Mexico. I-69 has been designated by the US Department of Transportation as a critical “Corridor of the Future.”

Now the TTC will be known as Innovative Connectivity in Texas/Vision 2009, and will be planned and executed as individual, smaller projects, rather than one easy-to-oppose whole.

“Projects that had been developed under the heading of the Trans-Texas Corridor will now become a series of individual projects,” Saenz said. “For example, Loop 9 in Dallas will be known and developed as Loop 9, not the ‘donut’ of TTC-35. Interstate 69 will be known and developed as Interstate 69, not Trans-Texas Corridor 69.”

This tactic is commonly used by governments and industries seeking to push unpopular megaprojects. Similar name shifts have occurred with the Anillo Periférico in El Salvador and with the much larger Plan Puebla Panamá (PPP), which has experienced at least two versions of this trick: first, unpopular initiatives like La Parota Dam and the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor were removed from its auspices but proceeded anyway; later, the whole PPP was simply renamed the Mesoamerica Initiative.