Posted on 08/18/2005 5:32:47 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border is a pure disconnect, at least in terms of transportation.
Both countries have highway routes designed long before the possibility that the economies of the two nations would someday integrate under a North American Free Trade Agreement.
The result is that NAFTA land trade must zigzag through obstacle courses as raw materials and components go to factories and final products are shipped to markets.
The best-positioned border-crossing ports, such as Laredo, are overcrowded. The others are underused.
The governments of both nations understand the competitive necessity to build better highway connections. The cost is prohibitive, however, and allocations amount to a drop in the bucket.
That's why nearly 200 U.S. and Mexican highway officials and contractors are attending a three-day conference in San Antonio through Thursday at the Westin Riverwalk Hotel.
Called the "Border Finance Conference," the meeting is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration and Mexico's Secretariat of Communication and Transport.
Attendees are exchanging ideas and generating ideas for increased private-sector participation in border highway projects.
The new highway construction bill signed into law by President Bush earmarks $833 million toward projects within 100 miles of the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada for the next five years, but that barely dents the needs, said Cindy Burbank, associate administrator of the Federal Highway Administration.
"The lack of funding is good in a way," Burbank said Tuesday. "It forces us to become teammates with the private sector."
The days of cobbling together federal, state and local taxpayer monies to finance highways are fading quickly. New highways increasingly will require private investment, which automatically adds risk and reward to the picture.
Although the conference term is "innovative financing," the everyday translation boils down to, yes, toll highways.
In this regard, Mexico is way ahead of the game. It has no fewer than 116 active public-private highway toll concessions, with plenty more on the drawing board. That's the most in the world. Japan is second with 30 concessions.
Texas has two high-profile public-private highway projects. Texas 130 will be a toll highway running parallel to Interstate 35, bypassing Austin. Much larger and long term is the Trans Texas Corridor, a proposed 4,000-mile network of toll roads, rail lines and utility lines that could cost $184 billion and take more than 50 years to build.
A Spanish toll-road builder, Cintra, and San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co. hold a contract with the state to produce plans for the first leg, from Mexico to Oklahoma.
Texas alone has 102 border zone projects worth $2.79 billion on the drawing board, all but four of them highways. Nearly half are totally unfunded. The rest are only partially funded, and less than half are toll candidates. All are projected to meet traffic needs anticipated by 2025.
Mexico's proposed highways are no less important to San Antonio's economic future, however. As North Mexico continues to industrialize, with a new Toyota plant near Tijuana, an expanding Ford plant at Hermosillo and rising auto production in Saltillo, better transportation is in demand.
And more Asian shippers are looking to Mexico's Pacific Ocean ports as a path to U.S. markets to avoid congested U.S. Pacific seaports. Several proposed toll highways in Mexico will improve the "land bridge" across Mexico to U.S. markets, better positioning San Antonio as a U.S. distribution point.
One Mexico project outlined at the Border Finance Conference is an 88-mile toll highway projected to stretch from Sabinas Hidalgo north of Monterrey to the state of Nuevo Leon's bridge at Colombia, upriver from Laredo.
For drivers of trucks and passenger cars seeking to avoid long lines at Laredo-Nuevo Laredo's bridges by using the Colombia bridge, the new toll route would cancel the need to drive 22 miles north from the current Nuevo Laredo-Monterrey highway.
Another Mexico project goes to bid this fall. It's a 31-mile toll highway stretching from Monterrey west to Highway 57, Mexico's "NAFTA Highway" to Matehuala, San Luis Potosí and Mexico City, just east of Saltillo.
That toll road would provide an alternative to the current free highway between the two industrial cities that is both dangerous and overcrowded.
Mexico also is proposing a new four-lane bridge almost 19 miles upriver from Reynosa, along with a connecting two-lane, six-mile highway. The "Anzaldúas" road-bridge project would be privately built and operated, providing relief to Reynosa's two congested bridges.
Each of these projects would add capacity for NAFTA and Asian freight, providing economic growth for both North Mexico and South Texas.
Why is more capacity necessary? One answer is global competitiveness. Maria Luisa O'Connell, president of the Border Trade Alliance, put it much more succinctly:
"China is making ports," O'Connell said, "as fast as making tortillas."
Pinging General and Trans-Texas Corridor PING lists.
What a load. We need less connected to Mexico, not more. We need barbed wire fences, guard towers and land mines, not highways to and from dystopian Mexico
They can take NAFTA, CAFTA-DR and the new Cement Texas Over campaign and shove them.
Don't be seduced by claims that there's gonna be no taxpayer subsidies.
With the recent SCOTUS blessing, you can be sure the Federales will be using eminent domain to confiscate private property for pennies on the dollar for this so-called "private" highway.
Walmart has made a major decision to bring some 20 to 28% of it's container imports through the Port of Houston. They are bring the imports through the Panama Canal on somewhat smaller ships because of the problems out west. Walmart is building a 4 million sq. ft. [92 acres or 70 football fields under roof] warehousing facility that is about 1/2 complete.
All of this will have an impact upon distribution out of Texas both rail and road.... Like it or not something will have to be done and fairly quickly to handle the incoming which becomes outgoing.
Thanks for the ping!
BTTT!!!!!!!
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