During the 1990s, growing traffic volumes and congestion in strategic Interstate highway corridors led Texas to explore new methods of financing and delivering needed surface transportation investments. Public officials in Texas began to look to tolling as a means to finance transportation improvements, as the proceeds from motor vehicle fuel taxes could not cover the cost of needed improvements and a fuel tax increase was not a tenable option.
In January 2002, Governor Rick Perry unveiled the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC) initiative. The program included a network of 11 multimodal corridors up to 1,200 feet wide, containing separate toll lanes for cars and trucks, rail lines for freight, commuter and high-speed train service and utility rights-of-way. The entire program was expected to cost between $145 and $184 billion. TxDOT believed that the program could be implemented through a combination of toll-backed P3 concessions and public sector funding.
One of the priority corridors in the program was "Trans Texas Corridor 35" (TTC-35), which would parallel I-35 from the Mexican border to Oklahoma. TTC-35 would serve as an Eastern Bypass of the greater Austin area, helping to divert much of the heavy freight traffic through the region from chronically congested I-35. Part of the Eastern Bypass included SH 130.
Meanwhile, TxDOT constructed the four northern segments of SH 130 under a design-build agreement as part of the Central Texas Turnpike, and opened the corridor to traffic in stages between 2006 and 2008. In early 2009, TxDOT canceled the Trans Texas Corridor program, but allowed individual components of the program to continue, under the environmental approvals received for the TTC-35 and TTC-69 (another priority corridor along the Gulf Coast and through Houston) and using financing tools made available by the state legislature.