North American SuperCorridor Coalition
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The North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc., is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing an international, integrated and secure, multi-modal transportation system along the International Mid-Continent Trade and Transportation Corridor, which it expects to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.
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[edit] Scope
NASCO encompasses Interstate Highways 35, 29 and 94, and the significant east/west connectors to those highways in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
[edit] Border Crossings
The project includes the largest border crossing in North America: The Ambassador Bridge in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario), the second largest border crossing: Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, the Ports of Manzanillo, Colima and Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, and goes as far north as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
[edit] Affiliations
NASCO now includes the former North American International Trade Corridor Partnership, a non profit organization in Mexico dedicated to economic development and improving trade relations through the heartland of the United States to Canada and Mexico. Both organizations intend to operate as one organization under the name NASCO, sharing both missions and objectives. Membership includes public and private sector entities along the corridor in all three participating countries.
[edit] Funding
NASCO has received $2.5 million in earmarks from the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) for the development of a technology and tracking tools. NASCO hopes the deployment of a modern information system will reduce the cost, improve the efficiency, reduce trade-related congestion, and enhance security of cross-border and corridor information, trade, and traffic.
[edit] Critics
Critics of supercorridors complain that existing transportation infrastructure is not being invested in and maintained. Other critics are concerned about the environmental damage which will occur by creating a supercorridor.
Further still, concerns regarding American job preservation (from the resulting influx of migrant truckers) threaten trucking, rail, and longshoremen unions. More American males are employed by semi-trucking companies in the United States, a statistic which will likely be changed by open border crossings.
This also raises concern for U.S. Merchant Mariners, who sail aboard U.S. flag vessels. Ships delivering to Mexican ports instead of U.S. ports may choose to switch to a flag of convenience, if they no longer fall under the Jones Act.
NASCO is often cited by political theorists as an apparatus of the North American Union.
