Bridge expansion aims to unclog traffic

BROWNSVILLE — An expansion project meant to speed up commercial traffic crossing the Veterans International Bridge at Los Tomates is under way and should be complete next year.
The project will add four lanes for the exclusive use of commercial truck traffic entering the United States from Mexico. Work on the U.S. side began June 6 and is expected to be complete in 2012. The contractor is McAllen Construction Inc.
“We’re doing foundation work right now,” said Trey Pebley, the firm’s vice president. “We’ve started close to the river and we’re working our way back.”
Pete Sepulveda, county administrator, said Mexican officials are still in the bidding process for the southern portion of the expansion and will probably be a month or two behind on construction. Once the northern and southern approaches to the river are complete, he said, another bid will go out and a contractor selected to build the center span — also called the “international span.”
“A Mexican contractor historically does the center span,” Sepulveda said. “The only reason I can think of is the Mexican contractor always bids a lower price than the U.S. contractor.”
The cost for the U.S. portion under construction is $5.4 million. The center span could add another $2.5 million, though the exact figure won’t be known until the bid goes out and a contractor is chosen, Sepulveda said. The Coordinated Border Infrastructure Fund, which contains federal money channeled through the Texas Department of Transportation, is covering 80 percent of the cost. County and city funds will pay for the rest.
Sepulveda added that no other infrastructure improvements will be required in addition to the four new lanes. Veterans International Bridge, which opened in 1999 and connects U.S. Expressway 77/83 with the industrial sector of Matamoros, is operated by Cameron County in partnership with the city of Brownsville.
The bridge gets roughly 6,000 passenger car crossings and 1,000 commercial truck crossings each way on a daily basis. Sepulveda noted that commercial traffic has steadily increased over the last three quarters.
The purpose of the project is to improve the flow of northbound commercial traffic and, ideally, attract more of it thanks to shorter wait times. The bridge currently has five inspection lanes, though passenger traffic and commercial traffic are mixed together. Frequently cars block trucks from getting into primary inspection stations, which slows things down; the four new lanes will solve that problem, Sepulveda said.
“We’re going to eliminate the mixture of passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles,” he said. “In essence we’re adding about 100 percent of new capacity.”