Transportation Commissioner's visit to highlights local needs
State Sen. Cesar Blanco played host to Texas Transportation Commissioner Alex Meade last week to discuss transportation needs and priorities in the Texas Department of Transportation's El Paso District, which includes El Paso, Culberson and Hudspeth counties.
The Texas Transportation Commission is TXDOT's governing body, which earlier this year approved the proposed I 10 expansion in El Paso as part of the state's $85.1 billion Unified Transportation Program, despite outcry from some local leaders.
That number was recently increased to $142.3 billion and approved last month.
In a statement, Blanco praised Meade, a native of Brownsville, for his unique appreciation of the "critical role transportation infrastructure in the Texas-Mexico border region plays in connecting the cultural, commercial, and economic fabric of the region to the rest of the state."
"This visit was a unique opportunity for our community to showcase the work that is taking place in the region," Blanco said in a statement following Meade's visit, "and highlight the critical projects planned to ensure local transportation infrastructure projects are supported and prioritized at the state level to improve overall mobility for our community and to strengthen our local and state economies."
The two hosted a roundtable discussion with community leaders and other stakeholders, Blanco, D-El Paso, said. Several ongoing and future El Paso projects were discussed, including Fort Bliss military installation projects, the I-10 West widening, the Borderland Express project and work from U.S. 54 Kenworthy to McCombs.
"Bringing state leaders to El Paso to hear directly from our community and see for themselves the dayto-day challenges we face as a region has always been a priority for me," Blanco wrote in an email. "It's important that the decision makers in our state know our community and what we bring to the table in terms of how we impact the state's economic success, so that as they deliberate how to allocate resources, they know what is important to us."
The Downtown I-10 expansion, the only portion of TXDOT's broader Reimagine I-10 project to raise the ire of some El Paso elected officials, was also on the agenda, Blanco said. The senator did not elaborate on whether widening the stretch of interstate was still the department's preferred option.
In a letter earlier this year, El Paso County commissioners called on TXDOT to consider two alternatives to simply expanding I-10 through Downtown, a move Commissioner David Stout has insisted would create "a truly progressive project that improves the highway's current impact on the health and safety of our constituents."
"The Reimagine I-10 project was a topic of discussion," Blanco wrote. "This project has been approved by the (El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization) and general consensus from the community is that this is a project that needs to move forward."
And while work is ongoing across El Paso, Blanco said he is still pushing for more to be done.
"We need to focus on projects that we know will improve the capacity and operations of the existing infrastructure, like those identified in the TexasMexico Border Transportation Master Plan," he wrote in the email. "This session, I was proud to secure funding for projects along the border through Rider 11C for projects specifically located within 60 miles of an international border crossing and recommended by the Border Trade Advisory Committee."
Further, he noted that while El Paso received its "largest investment ever" in the 2024 plan, it fell short of other major Texas cities.
"(We) still need to work towards our fair share compared to other large and growing districts," Blanco wrote, "to give us the resources to strengthen the competitiveness of our region, as well as our local and state economy."