(FORTUNE Magazine) – If you thought big-budget highway projects were all of the information variety these days, take a trip to Texas, where Dallas and Houston are gunning to be supergateways to Mexico. Dallas is spearheading a drive to gussy up I-35 and has enlisted communities as far north as Kansas City in the cause. Houston is part of a coalition of municipalities in eight states seeking to create an 1,800-mile extension of I-69 by upgrading a path of roads from Indianapolis to Mexico. The proposed highway would split south of Houston--the western leg running to Laredo and the eastern leg going to McAllen or Brownsville.

The I-69 coalition has the lead in terms of organization. They've tallied up a pricetag--$5.5 billion for the Indianapolis to Houston stretch--and they're armed with a feasibility study showing that for every $1 invested, I-69 would return $1.39 in economic development along the route. The study also claims the new improved road will save 50 lives annually.

"They're organizing to build what we already have," says Judge Jeff Moseley of Denton County, just north of Dallas, and chairman of the I-35 coalition. Yes, I-35 is already an interstate, but what the coalition hopes to do is upgrade it to a high-tech "Nafta superhighway." The plan is to build a fiber-optic spine running the length of the road. This would make it possible to automate checkpoints, track trucks, and expedite border crossings. Upgrading I-35 could shave perhaps ten hours off a trucker's trip from Kansas City into Mexico, now a 36-hour undertaking.

The I-69 and I-35 projects will compete for funds from a transportation bill slated to go before Congress in 1997, which will likely allot about $100 billion over six years. The two roads can expect additional competition from projects like "Avenue of the Saints" (St. Louis to St. Paul) and "Heartland Expressway" (Denver to Rapid City, South Dakota).

Are the new highways really necessary? David Forkenbrock, director of the public policy center at the University of Iowa, says the U.S. highway system is adequate, and suggests that economic gains will flow more from what type of goods are made than how those goods are transported. Says Forkenbrock: "To say you need a better or more capacious highway is silly rhetoric."

--Justin Martin