electricity; along with broadband and other telecommunications services. Although the model corridor design incorporates all of these elements running in parallel within a shared right-of-way, more recent plans suggested that existing rail and road corridors could be used for some components of the TTC. The model corridor design also represented the ultimate build-out of a corridor section, which would not have been realized for decades, if at all, as corridor segments and components were planned to be built based on traffic demand. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) attempted to provide oversight for planning, construction, and maintenance while day-to-day operations would have been performed by private companies. In March 2005, TxDOT and ACS-Zachry signed a comprehensive development agreement which authorized $3.5 million of planning for TTC-35. This agreement did not designate the alignment, authorize construction, set toll rates or who collects them, and did not eliminate competition for future services. There were no contracts awarded to develop or finance any other corridor. Corridors There were two initial trans-Texas corridors under consideration: One would have paralleled Interstate 35 (I-35), from Gainesville to Laredo and passing the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Austin and San Antonio. The other would have been an extension of the proposed I-69 corridor, generally following US 59, from Texarkana past Houston to either Laredo or the Rio Grande Valley. Both of these corridors have seen large increases in freight traffic demand over the past two decades due to increased trade with Mexico. Two additional high priority potential corridors would have paralleled Interstate 45 from Dallas to Houston and Interstate 10 from El Paso to Orange. TTC-35 ACS-Zachry, a partnership between Spanish-based toll-road developer/operator ACS and Texas-based Zachry Construction, was awarded a $3.5 million contract to help plan the entire TTC-35 route in March 2005. The study area for Trans-Texas Corridor-35 (TTC-35) generally followed Interstate 35 from Laredo to the Oklahoma border. The environmental study for the project proceeded in two tiers: a first tier that refined the study area to a wide study corridor and a second tier that selected particular alignments for the various corridor components; where all corridor components (rail, highway, and utilities) were planned to be built adjacent to one another, this corridor would have been approximately wide. The TTC-35 Tier 1 draft environmental impact statement (EIS) was published in April 2006. The final EIS was expected originally to be submitted to the Federal Highway Administration