by Kelly Simmons, Managing Editor and Senior Writer
Transportation issues continue to receive attention in the news along the U.S.- Mexico border during the month of Spetember. Some of those issues are summarized below:
The City of El Paso is moving ahead with plans to take over ownership of County Club Road between the New Mexico state line and Interstate 10. Currently the stretch of road is owned by the state and is officially designated as a Farm to Market Road. The state has a load limit of 50,000 pounds on the road, which is less than the standard 80,000 pound limit of most commercial trucks, but it cannot prohibit trucks from using the route.
In a recent El Paso Times article, Mayor Larry Francis stated that once Country Club is a city street, the City would stop large 18 wheel semi tractor rigs from using it, directing them instead to use New Mexico's highway, McNutt Road, which winds north to Canutillo and Interstate 10. The new route will add an additional 8 miles to the trip between the Santa Teresa Port and Interstate 10. The City of El Paso has been working on changing the ownership of Country Club Road for two years. The State of Texas has agreed "preliminarily" to the request and it will take approximately 6 months to clear the necessary approvals within the State's bureaucracy, including approval by the Texas Transportation Commission in Austin.
Daily traffic on Country Club Road during April 1995 was logged at 13,914 vehicles. Before the Port of Santa Teresa opened in 1992, the daily traffic count was 9,698 per day, however, it is not known how much of the current traffic is 18 wheeled commercial trucks. The planned closing of Country Club won't affect most of the maquilas, according to a representative from Roadrunner Distributing Co, because most of them still use the El Paso bridges.
According to reports from Notimex, the recent merger between the Burlington Northern railway and the Santa Fe railway, along with the coming privatization of the railway system throughout Mexico will favor El Paso and Juarez as the major rail crossing between the U.S. and Mexico . U.S. transportation industry analysts predict that the consolidation of the railroads may make the region the primary corridor between the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
The merger of the Burlington and Santa Fe created the only rail line between Canada and Mexico and it passes through El Paso-Juarez. A recent announcement of another merger between the Southern Pacific railroad and the Union Pacific, two of the largest rail companies in the U.S., will also have a major effect on the Paso del Norte region, especially for products that typically use rail transportation such as manufactured goods. El Paso and Juarez are home to the largest number of maquiladora manufacturing plants along the U.S.-Mexico border, an industry that uses rail as its primary means of transporting goods.
However, according to data from the Customs Service, El Paso is only the fifth largest in terms of value of merchandise crossing by train between the U.S. and Mexico, behind Laredo, Nogales, Eagle Pass and Brownsville. Nevertheless, traffic is increasing at El Paso. So much so that the Southern Pacific has almost doubled the number of daily crossings into Juarez, from 8 to 15, over the past two years. U.S. Customs reports that between 1993 and 1995, train crossings between the two communities increased by 7.1% to 894 in 1995.
Two of the nation's busiest international crossings, El Paso and Laredo, have been left out of a federal project to improve the efficiency of transporting merchandise across the border. The two crossings had initially been chosen to participate in the study that began in mid September, but were dropped due to lack of funding, according to a representative with the U.S. Treasury Department.
The study, called the North American Trade Automation Prototype, uses special devices to track shipments via computer from the manufacturer to its final destination. It enables shippers to register their cargo with several federal regulatory agencies using one computer system. The decision was unpopular with local customs brokers and other business leaders in El Paso. The sites chosen for participation are Otay Mesa, CA, Nogales, AZ, Buffalo, NY, and Detroit, MI.
Sources: Diario de Juarez, El Norte, El Paso Times