Reprint from the Progress Times - August 10, 2007
©Progress Times 2006 - All Rights Reserved

RMA looks at 50-year transportation needs

By Kathy Olivarez

"It’s a tough job but it has to be done for the good of people living in Hidalgo County in the next 50 years." Those are the words of Dennis Burleson, whom Governor Rick Perry appointed as chairman of the Hidalgo County Regional Mobility Authority (RMA) in 2006.

The RMA consists of one representative from McAllen, one appointed by each of the precinct commissioners and the county judge. Ruben Plata is the representative from Precinct 3. It is their duty to figure out what projects are needed to keep traffic in Hidalgo County moving over the next 50 years and how to pay for three projects that are not currently funded by the state gasoline tax.

Bid openings were to be held Thursday to select an engineering firm to work with the RMA to design a proposed loop, around Hidalgo County, similar to loops in other metro areas such as San Antonio’s Loop 410 and Houston’s Loop 610.

Burleson pointed out the state gasoline tax goes to the Metropolitan Planning Organization for their projects. The projects that did not make the cut for the MPO are the responsibility of the RMA. He further stated that some of the projects selected by the MPO would not be funded, as the MPO is about $1 billion short of what it needs for projects in Hidalgo County. Statewide the deficit is $86 billion.

Current projects being done by the MPO include portions of the Military Highway and the widening of Monte Cristo Road and the Mile 3 Road.

In addition to the gasoline tax, the MPO receives other sources of income such as license fees and DWI fines.

Projects such as the loop around Hidalgo County and the La Joya by-pass did not make the MPO’s funding cut. Another project that did not make the cut is a proposed truck route through the middle of the county to move traffic off the Pharr International Bridge.

Burleson suggested one way to fund the truck route was to reserve it only for trucks and make it a toll road. That would serve the county well in that it would leave the rest of the roads for the cars and regular traffic. The roads would be safer and the air would be cleaner.

While many Valley residents have said they would not pay tolls, Burleson said that to truckers time is money. Being able to get their goods to their destinations faster means more trips and more profit for the truckers.

Other projects are not as easily financed. There is not enough space in the City of La Joya to continue the expressway through town. A large cloverleaf would be needed to get school traffic off the highway while through traffic moved through town.

A more likely scenario for the future is to create a by-pass for through traffic that would swing to the north of La Joya. But even that creates a problem because it will have to be brought back to Expressway 83 near Sullivan City because of a wildlife sanctuary that cannot be disturbed.

The larger project that Burleson is concerned with funding is a loop around the county that would swing south of the Expressway between Mercedes and west of Mission to about Penitas. From Penitas in the west it would swing north to Monte Cristo Road north of Edinburg and later north toward McCook where it would turn east to join U.S. 281.

On the eastern side of the county it would go north to Monte Cristo Road and have a further north leg that would go as far north as the Edinburg Airport, which Burleson feels is destined to be a large cargo airport at some point in the future. The loop would then turn west toward U.S. 281.

The critical need in the next decade is development of the southern and western portion of the loop because traffic is already heavily congested. And as there is more development of maquiladora industries in Reynosa and Mexican cities to the south and west, the need for a route that will move traffic through the Valley quickly will grow.

Burleson said the traffic coming out of Mexico would only increase. Improvements are being made to ports on the West Coast of Mexico so goods can be shipped directly into Mexico instead of ports in California. These goods will travel by truck or by rail toward the United States for distribution. Improvements are being made to both the Mexican railroads and to the highway system in northwestern Mexico to allow this to happen.

Eventually there will be so many goods that Laredo will be unable to handle the flow of goods being moved from western Mexico. When that happens a larger portion of imported materials will be shipped through the McAllen port of entry.

It is the responsibility of the RMA to select the route where the loop will go. Nothing definitive has been decided as of yet. The roads shown on the preliminary maps could change as much as five miles one way or the other before a final decision is made.

Construction will not be a four, six or eight lane highway with bypasses in the beginning. The RMA will start by designating or constructing two-lane roads that will be widened to four or six-lane roads and improved with overpasses, clover-leafs and frontage roads as time goes by.

When asked how these roads would be paid for if the RMA had no funds, Burleson said the county would have to bear some of the initial costs.

He did mention that when improvements were made, such as going from two lanes to four lanes, they could become toll roads. But that would be a long time in coming.

The critical thing that the RMA must do at this time is locate the route that will cause the least disruption and protect the land by not allowing development to occur on it.

Roads are not the only concern of the RMA. Relocation of railroads is another possibility. As gasoline prices continue to rise, shipping cargo by rail will once again be a feasible alternative. If diesel were to hit $5 a gallon or if there was a major catastrophe that made gasoline difficult to find, the railroads would receive a higher volume of use.

Burleson pointed out that trains running through the middle of the towns across Hidalgo County day and night would spell disaster for traffic moving north to south across the railroads. A better plan would be to move the railroads south into the industrial areas.

Burleson addressed the possibility of another Mission International Bridge at the Madero site, which received a presidential permit and a railroad bridge permit years ago. Funding to build the bridge never materialized but the permit is still good. Burleson said the site has become too crowded to make a good bridge crossing.

Burleson said the RMA hoped to have "a sizable chunk" of the loop completed by 2012. But the first two years would be taken up with route selection and environmental studies. The earliest that construction could start would be 2009.

In closing, Burleson brought up a couple of other issues that will adversely affect traffic in western Hidalgo County. In 2009, Expressway 83 will be completed from Palmview to Brownsville. At that point, the interchange between S.H. 281 and Expressway 83 will start to fail. In other words, it will not have enough lanes to move the volume of traffic that will be using it.

Because of the way it is constructed it will not be possible to just add another lane to it. The entire interchange will have to be dismantled and rebuilt with more lanes. Burleson anticipates this will happen in 2010 and 2011. During the construction process, Valley residents will experience the type of traffic congestion that is found today in Houston or San Antonio.

Some people will not like the decisions made by the RMA, Burleson indicated. It may interfere with their lifestyle or future plans for development. But it has to be done for the good of the Valley. And it is long overdue.

As an example, he mentioned San Antonio. In the 1960s when the city had a population of 475,000, a two-lane road that connected all four of the military bases in the city was converted into Loop 410 around the city. Today that loop is the inner loop with Loop 1604 now being the outer loop.

Burleson said Hidalgo County’s current population is somewhere between 750,000 and 800,000. It is almost twice the size of San Antonio’s population when Loop 410 was established. And Hidalgo County is one of the fastest growing areas in the nation.

The question is not whether Hidalgo County needs a traffic loop around it; it is a question of how will the county pay for the loop and how soon can it be constructed? With Burleson and other able leaders working on the problem, something will be done in the next decade to start alleviating the traffic problems the county is currently experiencing and address future needs that the RMA identifies. And it will be none too soon.