How Donna is moving forward with its plan to bring commercial truck traffic to its international bridge

For the past 15 years, the city of Donna has sought to expand the Donna-Rio Bravo International Bridge to encourage commercial truck traffic along the Texas-Mexico border. Now, under a federal program that enables the city to invest in infrastructure and then donate the property to the government, the city is one step closer to achieving that goal.

The bridge opened in 2010 to pedestrian vehicles, and each month about 63,000 cross between the U.S. and Mexico. 

In 2017, however, Donna agreed to donate land to the General Services Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection for its “port of the future,” which would allow commercial traffic to come in from Mexico. 

That port of the future includes new truck-scanning technology and a single port-of-entry office in Donna, where commercial customs agents from both the U.S. and Mexico would work side by side to ease congestion and reduce wait times on either side of the bridge.