County wants state to pay for rail upgrade for hurricane evacuation plans

When Hurricane Dean barreled toward the Rio Grande Valley two years ago, the state sunk $25 million to put hundreds of buses on standby to wait for evacuees that never arrived.

Dean never made it here, slamming the Yucatán Peninsula before pushing into Central Mexico. Now Hidalgo County officials are positing that the next time a hurricane threatens the Valley, the state should stage passenger trains and not buses.

“It’s just an idea at this point that makes a lot of sense to be able to move people out of harm’s way on a rail system that is already here,” said Godfrey Garza, the executive director of the county’s Regional Mobility Authority. “It would be more economical and quicker to move the volume of people out of here using a rail system.”

The state has already said existing tracks will not handle passenger cars and that the price tag of upgrading the lines exceeds the cost of using buses. 

Still, Garza wants the state to consider rail evacuations and pay for the upgrades – something that would pave the way for the mobile authority to accomplish its goal of building a passenger rail system in the Valley, without having to foot the entire bill of upgrading the lines.

Evacuating the Valley remains a huge concern for emergency management officials largely because they don’t know how many poor people need help leaving the area if a Category 4 or 5 hurricane heads this way.

A state-sponsored study estimated that 350,000 people - or 1 in every 4 Valley residents - would need transportation assistance to get out of harm’s way. The $25 million the state spent to stage nearly 1,000 buses here before Hurricane Dean wouldn’t evacuate a fifth of that number.

Garza, who was appointed earlier this year to chair the board that oversees the rail district, said using existing train tracks that essentially run in a loop between here and Laredo could provide a larger-scale evacuation than buses at a fraction of the price.

The rail district - which is primarily interested in creating an alternative transportation method for Valley residents - received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to conduct a comprehensive study on the costs and demand for passenger rail service.

The feasibility of upgrading existing freight lines to evacuate residents will be contained in that report.

Tony Peña, Hidalgo County’s emergency management coordinator, previously proposed using the rail lines for evacuation purposes.

But the state told him that the tracks in South Texas could not carry passenger cars, he said. Building new light rail lines - at a price tag of up to $30 million a mile - or upgrading the existing tracks could prove costly.

Still, it’s an idea that has merit especially when considering the large number of Valley residents who need evacuation assistance, said state Rep. Armando “Mando” Martinez, D-Weslaco.

Martinez, a firefighter and paramedic who passed a bill in the 2007 legislative session that allowed the county to create the district, said train cars could easily be outfitted like a hospital room to carry patients from emergency rooms or nursing homes.

If the plan is feasible, the state could use money it spent on staging for a storm like Dean on passenger rail lines that would serve a year-round purpose, he said. The rail lines might prove to be more cost effective in the long run than buses.

“It’s a good idea to use (rail) as a resource for evacuation,” Martinez said. “We have to look at all options.”

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Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government, Edinburg and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4424.