Rural Texans in particular breathed a huge sigh of relief last week when the Trans-Texas Corridor was declared officially dead. They had rightly complained that the road and rail project beloved by Gov. Rick Perry was simply too ambitious, too harmful to the farms and ranches through which it would run.

The death of the project announced by the Texas Department of Transportation doesn't negate the pressing need for better roads to serve the far reaches of this big state. Indeed, as the population grows, the demand for more and better roads will grow with it.

Perry's plan for the Trans-Texas Corridor was for up to 4,000 miles of roads and rail lines set in a swath up to 1,200-feet wide. The highways would be toll roads, with six lanes for automobiles and pickups and four separate lanes for large trucks. There would be up to two high-speed rail lines and four traditional rail lines. In addition, there would be room for utility lines, including data networks, and oil and gas pipelines.

Cost of the project was estimated at upwards of $180 billion. The plan was for private companies to build the project, recouping their investments through the tolls.

A contract for the first phase of the project, planned to parallel Interstate 35 from north of Dallas to Laredo, was awarded to Spanish construction company Cintras Concesiones.

Farmers and ranchers objected to the size of the project, which would take 146 acres of land for every mile of the corridor. Such a land grab would devastate the landscape and destroy many agriculture livelihoods.

Further, the corridor would bypass many rural communities and would have extremely limited access for those who were being asked to give up so much.

It is good that the Trans-Texas Corridor is dead. That said, a more modest -- although still large -- plan should be created to upgrade existing roads such as -- in this area -- U.S. 190 running through Central Texas to Louisiana and U.S. 79 running to the northeast part of the state. Those and similar highways in Texas are heavily traveled and, in many areas, are only two-lanes wide.

It would take far less land to widen the existing roads than to build a large corridor -- and far less money. And it needn't be done by foreign companies over which we have no say.

Further, widening the existing roads would be a boon to the communities along the way, helping them grow and prosper. Bryan-College Station and the entire Brazos Valley would benefit immensely from such a project.

Now, road projects in the big cities eat up an inordinate amount of the dollars available for highway construction. As important as those projects are, the more rural areas of the state cannot be ignored.

There was a time when people traveling the country crossed into Texas and found the roads better than in any of the surrounding states. That no longer is true. In many cases, the highways in our immediate neighbors are superior to those in Texas.

It is time to rectify that -- not to give us bragging rights over Oklahoma or New Mexico or any of the neighboring states, but to ensure that every Texan can travel wherever he or she needs to go in the state quickly and safely.

So let's bury the Trans-Texas Corridor. At the same time, let's breathe life into a better project to revamp our existing highways and byways.

That should be something we all can support.