Half a billion dollars in Valley road projects sit idle, South Texas lawmakers say

WESLACO — South Texas lawmakers warned Rio Grande Valley leaders that economic momentum will stall without faster action on transportation projects, even as major development and population growth accelerate.

State Reps. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, and Armando Martinez, D-Weslaco, delivered the message at a South Texas Alliance of Cities meeting in Weslaco last week.

They described the Valley as an economic powerhouse that is not fully capitalizing on its assets, and said delays in funding shovel-ready transportation projects could limit future growth without decisive action.

When it comes to transportation infrastructure projects, the Valley is “failing,” Canales said. 

Canales, who previously chaired the Texas House Transportation Committee and now leads the House Subcommittee on Transportation Funding, has long pressed for faster action on Valley transportation projects.

“We’ve got huge lists of funding that are delayed, and they’re not delayed for any other purpose than people’s monetary gain,” he said. “That’s a fact. So the reality is we don’t pick our funding-ready, shovel-ready projects. We spend money on projects that are 20 years out, and we’ve got engineers that are getting paid for 20-year projects when we have projects that are ready to go right now and we’re not doing it.”

Canales said there are more than half a billion dollars worth of delayed projects sitting on the table.

“Those are easily identifiable by TxDOT. I don’t have a list on hand, but I can tell you there’s hundreds of millions of dollars of projects that are shovel-ready, plans have been approved, but we’re focusing on stuff that’s 10 years out,” he said. “So we need to focus on what we’ve already got funded and what we can build now.”

Brownsville Mayor John Cowen, who serves as chairman of the South Texas Alliance of Cities and chair of the Rio Grande Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization, said during a press conference after the panel that the MPO reorganized its project list over the past two months.

“Now we have the next 10 years planned out based on shovel readiness. So it is in place, that process has been done,” Cowen said.

Canales said regional coordination could also help the Valley better capitalize on its international bridges.

The Valley has a major economic asset in its ports of entry, he said, but those bridges are plagued by costly wait times.

Collaboration between bridge operators, Canales said, could reduce congestion by directing traffic more efficiently, similar to how airports manage aircraft on multiple runways.

“There is enough trade for everybody to get a piece of the pie,” Canales said. “But we’re not running it efficiently. If we ran the bridges efficiently, the Valley would blow up. But we don’t do it.”

Martinez urged local officials and stakeholders to begin developing legislative agendas early, saying the members of the Alliance are well positioned to advocate on behalf of their communities.

“If anybody knows what is best for their community it’s the locals,” Martinez said. “It’s your mayors, it’s your commissioners, it’s your community leaders that are in the trenches daily.”