Meet the CEO behind the Rio Grande Valley’s passenger rail moonshot

The top executive of a company trying to build a new railroad across the Rio Grande Valley and north toward Alice, is a North Texas oil and gas landman and the CEO of Triangle Railroad Holding Co. 

Paul Bertanzetti says the company plans to raise $8 billion by structuring the business as a Real Estate Investment Trust, or REIT, and selling shares in the venture using securities brokers. So basically, the company would make money by developing real estate around the proposed commuter and freight railroads and use that to pay for the transportation infrastructure. 

Triangle Railroad Holding Co., founded in 2009, has an option to purchase 400 acres of land in Mission near a neighborhood known as Madero, where the city has long planned to build an international railroad bridge to Monterrey, Mexico. 

Bertanzetti’s plan is to build two railroads, one for commuter rail and the other for freight. The would travel along U.S. Highway 281 in the Valley and go north to Alice, where the railroad would split off towards San Antonio and Houston. 

“I’ve been a land man or in the title business for a long time. I’ve always wondered why these guys didn’t want to tie in the rail project with real estate development,” Bertanzetti, who is also president of the RGV Rail Advocates, said. “We’re not asking for public money.” 

The executive holds an economics degree from the University of Dallas and has worked in land development, mostly for oil and gas and title companies, for nearly five decades. 

His fellow executives include Dennis Williams, a vice president of operations and safety who retired from Envoy Air, a regional air carrier for American Airlines; and George Blount, who is a longtime member of Texas Rail Advocates in Dallas. 

The goal is to divide the 400 acres in Mission into five or six sections, with mixed-use development that includes hotels, apartments, warehouses, offices, and entertainment. 

“We already have two hotels that have given us letters of intent that they want to be a part of it,” Bertanzetti said. “Then, when we get a little further along, we’ll have a rail line going across the Rio Grande into Monterrey and eventually to extend that line into Mexico City. We’re already talking with the mayor of Monterrey, and they’re very interested in it.” 

The company intends to create a separate REIT for the international rail bridge in Mission. 

Bertanzetti lives in North Texas, where there have been efforts to get commuter rail projects off the ground. None have been successful other than the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system, which is a light rail across the city. The Texas Central Railway project, a proposed high-speed train from Dallas to Houston, has been stalled for years. 

“Somebody asked me. Why don’t you do something in North Texas? And that’s a good question,” he said. “The reason is that people are very antagonistic to rail projects. And it’s a sad thing, but it’s not the way it is in the Valley.”

Instead, former Mission Mayor Armando O’Caña is a member of the RGV Rail Advocates group. The advocates envision the success of a commuter rail system between Miami and Orlando as an example of what they want to build: a privately held, company-operated system. 

Amtrak operates two major long-haul passenger rail lines across Texas. The Texas Eagle runs from McGregor through Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin, Del Rio, and El Paso. The Sunset Limited operates between Beaumont and El Paso, through Houston, San Antonio, and Del Rio. There’s also Amtrak service between San Antonio and Austin, but it takes over 3.5 hours, compared to 1.5 hours by car with traffic. 

In the Rio Grande Valley, there’s no shortage of historical railroad infrastructure. There are more than 300 railroad crossings with roadways in Hidalgo County, according to a 2011 feasibility study for the Hidalgo County Rail District. Consultants estimated that by 2030, there would be a potential pool of 16,200 riders in Hidalgo County alone for commuter rail. 

“The problem with Highway 83 is the number of crossings you have, the number of streets going north and south cuts it. So you’d have to elevate it,” Bertanzetti said. “But that will eventually have to be done because everybody goes North and South. But below the Highway 83 area, we have Military Parkway, which should be another route we’ll look at. Another route would be along Hidalgo County’s 365 Loop.” 

But the existing railroads have only been used for freight trains. 

Rio Valley Switching Company operates 70 miles of freight railroad tracks between Mission and Harlingen, which includes a section inside the McAllen Foreign Trade Zone on the city’s south side. 

“We don’t want to negatively impact the [existing freight] railroads, we want to be able to complement them,” Bertanzetti said. 

The estimated cost to build a new railroad at grade is about $5 million per mile, and for an elevated railroad, it is about $50 million per mile. 

The company is eager to get started, and it’s certainly not interested in a 20-year horizon. The group recently hosted its second Rio Grande Valley railroad conference in Mission. 

“None of us are really young; we want to get started right away,” Bertanzetti said. “Once we get the money coming in, we want to start turning dirt. That’s why we’ve had these rail conferences.”