basically kneecapped cities so like i think you see it in transportation which is like the chairman of the texas at the senate transportation commission is this man, robert nickels. he rural texas. he has an enormous of power. but like his constituents don't really need or want transit. i certainly think like in rural texas are an appropriate solution. but like, i mean, the like voters in texas don't have much power in the state legislature and that is manifest negatively in many ways. and one of them is transportation. yes. in the book you don't really address the highway lobby, which is oil and gas motor vehicles, highway construction and suburban development. all those industries make a lot of money off of highway building and, you know, are you sure it's the transportation commission that's making these decisions? is it the highway lobby? oh, i mean, it's absolutely a story of political corruption. and i did do that reporting for my story in the texas observer that ran in 2021, looking the associated general contractors just as a as a slice of that highway lobby of how much money they give to texas politicians. and like i said, th

as you pointed out, i mean, the real power, it comes to transportation in texas is the texas transportation commission. and it it it's really amazing to to read some of the accounts in the book and to get the sense that they're they're really sort of disinterested or in the sentiment of people in the communities that are going to be affected by some of these projects, whether it was the i-35 expansion. in the case of the i-45, you had someone that you write about ultimately filing a rights case with the federal government, put a pause on the project and my reading of it was that the texas transportation commission kind, they were kind of vengeful about it and said, well, okay, parts of this project you might want, we're going to, we're going to we're going to just didn't give that up. you're like, i get that because you're trying to block this this expansion i-45 and along those lines in san antonio we had an experience very similar where we had a project that was overwhelming only approved by voters it was a project dealing with broadway street, which runs north south from in san antonio. and the was

so, there were no objections from the texas transportation commission, but, after the bond was passed, and well, the plans went forward, and suddenly, at o a certain point, the chairman of texas transportation commission, bruce bowe, decided that this was not going to happen. we had the mayor of san antonio adamantly in support of this. as i said, the voters of san antonio adamantly in support of this. and that chairman of the texas transportation commission did not care. i want to get your thoughts about it. you wrote about this very well in the book. and as you point out in the book, there were a lot of questions, suggestions that bruce bowe had heard from governor greg abbott, and that had affected -- because we haven't really heard any objection to this for a long time, then suddenly we did. >> yeah, that was remarkable, to me, when that happened. like, watching that unfold. as you said, the voters of san antonio overwhelmingly approved this bond that would have narrowed that road and added bike and pedestrian infrastructures that would have taken away two lanes to add bike lanes

the texas transportation commission essentially turned over control to the city of san antonio. chnically they still had ownership of it. there were no objections from the commission after the bond was passed. while the plans went forward. suddenly at a certain point the chairman decided that this wasn't going to happen. we had the mayor of san antonio in support of this. the voters adamantly in support of this. the chairman did not care. i want to get your thoughts about it. he wrote about this very well in the book. as you point out there were a lot of questions and suggestions that bruce had heard from the governor that had affected it because we had not really heard any objections to this. and suddenly we did. >> that was remarkable to me when that happened. watching that unfold. the voters of san antonio overwhelmingly approved this bond that would have never the root and edit infrastructure to take away to add bike lanes that the voters overwhelmingly approved. there was some technicality that they had not actually turned over ownership despite working with engineers in san