Trench Warfare

Those nice people at the Texas Department of Transportation are considering widening the freeway in Downtown El Paso, eliminating lots of property (including St. Clement’s play field, the Holocaust Museum, and the historic Pearl Apartments with that cool mural), and converting Yandell into a high-speed freeway access road. God bless those nice people at TXDot.

I believe this is all preparatory to the construction of a soccer stadium on top of the proposed deck over the freeway. MountainStar Sports soccer team will use it, but, judging on past experience, you will pay for it.

One wonders why we need to widen the freeway at all, since, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, El Paso’s population has hardly grown at all since 2012, and the imminent advent of autonomous cars will improve highway efficiency. The only reasonable explanation is that MountainStar needs a place to put their soccer stadium.

Today is the last day to comment on this project.

You can reach TXDot’s comment page through this link here.

Please let your voice be heard.

3 comments

  1. A few points to make, aren’t they supposed to have meetings here about the project? Besides tearing down historic and important buildings, this idea will increase the traffic jams downtown. Not only does the plan turn Yandell into a Gateway, it takes out three streets from the feeder pattern going from downtown up toward the northern part of Mesa. I doubt the soccer stadium could be built t”.

    1. They had several meetings about that project. I went to two. TXDot is talking about making a giant traffic circle around the deck to obviate the need for the bridges. And they said you couldn’t put a ballpark on the site of City Hall. And yet.

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