TxDOT Ignores El Paso’s Needs To Make a Grab at Infrastructure Dollars
“The Trench”: a depressed section of I-10 through downtown El Paso. Property to the left will be taken to widen the highway. All but three of these bridges connecting downtown to the neighborhood north will be eliminated.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) wants to widen and reconstruct Interstate 10 through Central El Paso. The regional Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), most local elected leaders, and the monied interests in the city’s Chamber of Commerce are all in favor. This massive, billion-dollar boondoggle is not only unnecessary, but will permanently damage the character of downtown and the quality of life in surrounding neighborhoods.
In my recent column in El Paso Matters, I point out widening the highway will induce further demand. Nevertheless, it remains the centerpiece of a flawed $7-billion long-range plan that ultimately does little to reduce highway congestion.
TxDOT began the project in 2016 with its Reimagine I-10 analysis of the highway through El Paso County. The study was flawed from its inception, because it failed to consider rerouting the highway around the city by incorporating a bypass as part of a comprehensive plan to reduce traffic in the city.
Interstate 10 is the major southern transcontinental highway. From the West Coast, it turns south at Las Cruces, New Mexico, and enters Texas from the north. Just past the University of Texas at El Paso, before downtown El Paso, it turns east again. US 54 runs from the Bridge of the Americas Port of Entry with Mexico in Central El Paso, north through Alamogordo, New Mexico, and into the Midwest.
Anyone who can read a map can see that the Anthony Gap, north of El Paso in New Mexico, provides a level, unpopulated route around the city that would not increase distance to cross-country travel. While a four-lane roadway through the Anthony Gap is under construction, it is not a limited access highway. The proposed Borderland Expressway in Texas, which would complete the bypass, is not scheduled for completion until after widening I-10 thorough the city.
The Border West Highway, the final segment of Loop 375 around the city, was recently completed. Though currently free, the section around downtown along the border is posted as a toll road and it is underutilized. While Loop 375 provides a bypass for cars, the segment over the mountain is too steep for trucks.
I-10 through downtown. TxDOT would turn Yandell and Wyoming into suburban-style frontage roads and extend them east and west along the entire highway. All the property along Yandell from Campbell to the westbound entrance ramp, including the Holocaust Museum and two historic apartment buildings, will be destroyed.
Neither TxDOT nor the MPO is aggressively promoting or incorporating either highway into a comprehensive strategy to divert traffic around the city. Their priority is to continue funneling traffic through the city on I-10.
In the 1880s the transcontinental railroad came through El Paso. In 1925, a long-range city plan recognized that the railroad running through downtown hindered urban development. It was noisy, dirty, and divided the city. Though depressed below grade, it is still there. A huge, unused rail yard remains undeveloped east of downtown.
In the 1960s, the city doubled down on the existing flawed urban design and built the interstate highway through the downtown. As in many other cities, the highway construction destroyed poor, minority communities and further divided the city. And, just like the railroad, it brought all cross-country and cross-border traffic through downtown.
Like most North American cities since World War II, El Paso expanded for cars, not people. Unsustainable development continues to spread across the desert, mostly along highways.
In 2012 the city adopted a nationally acclaimed long-range plan to go in another direction. Plan El Paso set out to make the city “the least car-dependent city in the Southwest” and “join the ranks of the most walkable and transit-rich metropolitan areas in the country.”
Unfortunately, while cities around the world are reducing or eliminating urban highways, reconnecting neighborhoods, and revitalizing urban life, leadership in El Paso is ignoring its own urban plan and working with the Texas Department of Transportation to move backwards in time.
All cross-country and cross-border traffic passes through downtown El Paso. TxDOT and the MPO have no plan to divert it.
The preferred TxDOT plan for Central El Paso would significantly widen the highway footprint. It adds more main travel lanes, as well as “adaptive lanes” of unspecified use or necessity. It creates suburban-style collector and frontage roads. It would reduce existing connections over the highway between downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. It would take more property by eminent domain and reduce property value. With the bigger highway, of course, comes more congestion, more noise, and more air pollution.
Ironically, there is no demonstrated need to widen I-10 downtown. It is not on any list of “the most congested roads in Texas.” It is not even the most congested road in El Paso County. There is no definitive data on how traffic patterns would change with a completed bypass or toll-free Border Highway.
An independent traffic engineer, recently hired by El Paso County, shows TxDOT used flawed traffic modeling to justify their plan to widen the highway—a plan that would not eliminate congestion. The consultant’s alternative design would not expand the existing highway footprint. Instead, it would eliminate some of the central city exits, leaving the highway for through traffic and longer regional travel. It would reconfigure the suburban-style frontage roads as city streets. They would connect with the existing street grid, providing local traffic alternative routes away from the highway.
El Paso City Council recently adopted a resolution calling on TxDOT and the MPO to consider design changes to reduce the size of the proposed frontage roads to city street proportions..
Interstate 10 is unquestionably an important part of the international and national transportation infrastructure. There is, however, no reason this vital transportation route must go through the heart of El Paso. Juarez, located adjacent to El Paso across the border, is moving forward with plans to redirect cross-border freight traffic out of their city to ports of entry in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and Tornillo. Yet TxDOT plans to spend billions of dollars to expand the Bridge of the Americas point of entry and continue forcing all international freight and transcontinental traffic through Central El Paso.
TxDOT rendering of the wider I-10 east of downtown with new raised collector and frontage roads. Our own mini-Katy Freeway.
Granted, the TxDOT transportation priority is focused statewide. Its primary concern is moving freight from West Coast ports to Dallas and Houston. Their priority isn’t quality of life in El Paso. That said, the MPO and local leaders should care. Unfortunately, they are caught up in claiming the region’s “fair share” of federal and state infrastructure funds even if they’re spent on projects detrimental to local urban life.
Urban highways don’t promote local economic development. They concentrate traffic at congested exits where chain restaurants and big box stores siphon money out of the local economy. Local businesses thrive on city streets where people can safely walk, bike, drive, or take transit. Transportation money would be better spent building “complete streets” to accommodate multimodal and mass transit.
Converting one-way streets back to two-way streets would provide more alternatives to getting around town. Narrower travel lanes would slow vehicular traffic, making streets safer for cyclists. Planting trees would provide shade for pedestrians, as well as reducing noise and air pollution. Replacing traffic lights with four-way stops or roundabouts would also slow traffic without increasing travel time.
A wider urban highway will not promote economic development or improve the quality of life in El Paso. It will only increase congestion, noise, and air pollution. It will facilitate the second coming of the Suburban Experiment.
Local leaders should focus on long-range planning for sustainable redevelopment. They must work with state, national, and international interests to promote mass transit and infill development to reduce congestion and urban sprawl. It won’t be easy, but a livable El Paso in the future depends on getting it right now.
(All images for this article were provided by the author.)
Robert Storch is a retired criminal defense lawyer and 30-year resident of El Paso.
We have to end highway expansion and focus on projects that actually build wealth in our cities. If you’re not convinced, then read on.