Mobility authority gets $78.5 million for trade connector tollway

EDINBfURG — The Hidalgo County delegation that traveled to Austin last month to sell an application for nearly $100 million in state highway funding carried a simple message.

“We told them, ‘We’re not asking for a handout,’” said Michael Cano, a board member of the Hidalgo County Regional Mobility Authority who joined other transportation officials and elected leaders on the trip. “‘We’re asking for a partner.’”

They got one Thursday.

The Texas Transportation Commission approved the mobility authority’s $78.5 million application for pass-through financing, a state program that allows local municipalities or private entities to pay for a transportation project and then get reimbursed from the state for the traffic that travels along it.

The action provides a critical injection of state funding as the locally operated mobility authority seeks financing for a $400 million, 30-mile tollway that will run between the Anzalduas and Donna international bridges.

Pass-through financing was created to stretch limited transportation funds by allowing local communities to pay for the costs of a project up front and be reimbursed by the state later, said Mario Jorge, TxDOT’s district engineer for an eight-county region that includes Hidalgo County. The mobility authority will leverage a small pool of state funding with a larger pile of local revenues from tolls and vehicle registration fees to finance and construct the trade corridor — making a $78 million state contribution a catalyst for a $400 million project.

 “It’s nice to help those who are helping themselves,” Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes told Hidalgo County Judge Rene Ramirez and other county officials after the mobility authority’s application was approved.

STATE FUNDING

The transportation commission approved the county’s two applications out of about three dozen that were submitted from across the state.

The mobility authority will use the funding to construct the Trade Corridor Connector, a 12.7-mile, east-west corridor that connects the Anzalduas International Bridge to the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge. But connector will be coupled with a separate project in eastern Hidalgo County — called the International Bridge Trade Corridor — linking the western county project to the Donna-Rio Bravo International Bridge and U.S. 281.

Although the mobility authority can cover most of the cost of the 16.3-mile project on the eastern side of the county with local vehicle registration fees, traffic studies show that the two projects depend on each other to generate enough toll revenues to be viable.

The mobility authority planned to finance the two projects by borrowing against future revenues from tolls, the vehicle registration fees and increases in property valuations along the corridor.

But financial advisers generally showed a deficit whenever they tried to cover the project’s costs with local revenues alone, said Godfrey Garza, the executive director for the mobility authority. With the state’s $78 million commitment in place, the mobility authority’s board members will meet with Hidalgo County commissioners next month to discuss financing.

FIRST PROJECT

But mobility authority chairman Dennis Burleson was optimistic that the first half of the project could be under construction next year with state funding in place.

“The pass-through funding goes a long way to securing our ability to finance the road,” Burleson said. “We still need to do some studying and check with our banker, but this should put us on the way to getting the whole connection built from the Anzalduas bridge to the Donna bridge.”

The trade connector will be the first project under construction by the mobility authority, an independent government agency created in 2005 that has taken flak for spending more than $20 million to date without putting any shovels in the ground.

The mobility authority was originally planning to build a highway loop around the county until financing efforts fell short last summer. The agency scaled back its plans, opting instead for the trade connector, a tollway that links five international bridges to U.S. 281 and is viewed as the first phase of the loop.

The trade connector will make the county’s surface streets safer and less congested as freight traffic diverts onto the toll road in search of a faster route to points north, Burleson said. Once the construction debt is paid off, toll revenues generated from the connector can help finance the rest of the loop or fund other highway projects.

TRADE TRAFFIC

Hidalgo County bears the brunt of more than $1 billion in goods that travel into the state from Mexico each day, even if those goods are ultimately headed elsewhere, said state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen. The state is alleviating some of that burden by putting $114 million toward bringing U.S. 281 up to expressway standards and by assisting with the mobility authority’s trade connector project.

But Ramirez, the county judge, said the state investment on the latter project wouldn’t have happened without a local commitment.

In several trips to Austin to advocate for the trade connector, Ramirez and other county officials stressed that a relatively small investment by the state could turn into a $400-million highway project that facilitates international trade and commerce.

“We’re in this together with the state,” Ramirez said. “We needed to show them we have skin in the game, too.”

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Jared Janes covers Hidalgo County government, Edinburg and general assignments for The Monitor. He can be reached at (956) 683-4424.