From CBS4Local:
As CBS4’s John Purvis reported in a Tough Questions Special Report last week, the federal government’s planned expansion of the Bridge of the Americas could lead to the demise of a number of nearby properties, including the El Paso County Coliseum.
The government says it needs the expansion to deal with the growing traffic at the border.
. . .
As the federal government prepares a $700 million expansion of the Bridge of the Americas, some county leaders and nearby residents are concerned about what the proposed expansion could cost them in additional traffic and pollution, along with the potential loss of community resources like the County Coliseum.
Isn’t that great? The federal government is working to increase truck traffic in the center of town. Just what we need.
From Representative Veronica Escobar’s official government web page (the one with the picture of the Sierra Juarez):
“The economic prosperity of El Paso and the strength of our national supply chain relies on the trade flowing across our outdated land ports of entry,” said Congresswoman Escobar. “Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the much-needed modernization and expansion of the Bridge of the Americas Land Port of Entry will be fully funded. I look forward to working closely with the General Services Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and community partners and stakeholders in our binational region to ensure this project creates good-paying jobs, promotes economic growth and development, and reduces air pollution in the borderland.”
I don’t understand how creating more truck traffic in the middle of town will create good paying jobs and promote economic growth and development, but I guess that makes as much sense believing that increasing truck traffic in the middle of the city will reduce air pollution. I guess once you get to Congress reason gives way to political expediency.
You know we built that Port of Entry out by Tornillo to deal with all that truck traffic, but I guess that land on the Mexican side doesn’t belong to the right speculators.
And maybe part of the plan is to bulldoze the County Coliseum to reduce the redundancy for that downtown arena. That, and free up the County’s share of the Hotel Occupancy Tax that the Coliseum is eating. Our benevolent overlords want that money for the soccer stadium they want to put over the freeway.
Our elected officials and their generous campaign donors will flush the community down the toilet to achieve their dreams.
You’re only here to pay the tab.
You connect the dots very well. Just follow the money.
You are absolutely correct about why would you want to congest the center of El Paso once again with 18 wheel truck traffic. Since the reconstruction of the freeway into Juarez by Txdot, Paisano is a lot easier to navigate and no more back up truck traffic in that area. She need to realize that they made a mistake when they first decided to make the Urban center of El Chuco into this mess and still invested in expansion of the very small area they had for equipment to inspect and search for drugs. They need to invest and move to Zaragoza Bridge where there is plenty of land and access to I-10.
This doesn’t seem to take into consideration what this might do on the Mexican side of the border, either. For one thing, most of the businesses that used to thrive on the Mexican side of the border are long dead today, and there remains a lot of under used land in that area. I suspect that this ill conceived idea has a lot of unspoken impetus behind it, and agree that either Tornillo or Santa Teresa would be better for increased truck traffic.
ah but Texas is not interested in more business for Santa Teresa…NEW MEXICO!!!
I drove Uber for almost two years. We HATED going to the bridge because the whole place is terribly planned. One thing not mentioned is that the border crossing overpass and bridge were just completed. They going to tear all that down and begin again? Oh yeah, the low cost housing between the Coliseum and the bridge, we’re going to kick more low income people out of available space?