Sullivan City holds hope for U.S.-Mexico rail bridge

Written by jrood

Sullivan City, Texas, Mayor Rosendo Benavides traces his finger along a line on the map leading from Monterrey to South Texas, The Monitor of McAllen, Texas, reports Abruptly, right before it crosses the Rio Grande near his small town of 4,000, it jags straight east - running near the river before heading into the United States near Brownsville. That line - a Kansas City Southern railroad track that stops just across the river from Sullivan City - offers the best chance his city has to secure an international bridge, he said.  

If the city can pull
together the political clout for a presidential permit authorizing a rail
bridge, Benavides believes his city will get the international crossing it has
yearned for years. The county’s economic development and political leaders
recently amended an application started two years ago to bring a rail bridge to
Sullivan City. While the town was first focused on building a bridge solely for
vehicle traffic, no rail crossing currently exists between Brownsville and
Laredo.

 

Building one near Sullivan
City – and tying it into a line at Hebbronville that runs to points north -would
give manufacturers another way to move goods out of the Rio Grande Valley and
tie Hidalgo County into busy Gulf Coast ports such as Tampico.

 

As he traced his hands
along the map showing rail lines in northern Mexico and South Texas, Benavides
summed up what a bridge would mean for his city.

 

"Economic development," he
said as he leaned over a table in a taqueria just across the Starr County line.
"It would put (Sullivan City) on the map."

 

Sullivan City is an ideal
spot for a new rail bridge because it has already submitted a permit request
and because of the nearby rail lines, said Mingo Villarreal, coordinator for
Precinct 3. Railroad tracks pass close to the river at Ciudad Gustavo Diaz
Ordaz on the Mexican side of the border and run along Business 83 in Sullivan
City on the U.S. side.

 

Connecting the two lines
would provide a new option to move freight short distances between the maquilas
and production facilities in Hidalgo and Starr counties, said Keith Patridge,
executive director of the McAllen Economic Development Corporation.

 

Companies looking to locate
there – including an unnamed auto manufacturer McAllen is trying to lure to the
area – often complain about the lack of access to large freight railroad
companies, he said.

 

Union Pacific, the largest
railroad company in the United States, jointly owns the B&M International
Bridge in Brownsville. The company also owns rail lines that cross the Valley
and the only tracks that head north out of Harlingen. But Kansas City Southern
owns most of the tracks in northeast Mexico, including the international rail
bridge between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo.

 

Connecting the company’s
lines from Monterrey to its switching station in Hebbronville would give
Hidalgo County manufacturers access to a second major railroad company,
Patridge said.

 

But even with widespread
support for an international rail bridge near Sullivan City, the process is
expected to take years. Bureaucratic tangles for a presidential permit are difficult
to unwind as are right-of-way agreements and raising the necessary money.

 

Officials are hopeful that KCS
could either completely or jointly fund the bridge and the line to connect it
to Hebbronville. But a spokeswoman for the Kansas City, Mo.-based company said
it is not currently involved in negotiations.

 

Delays are not unusual for
bridge projects, said Rolando Gonzalez, who has managed the daily affairs for
Sullivan City for seven years. County officials worked at length to build a
bridge in the mid-1990s near the Los Ebanos ferry before the project fell apart
when residents worried it would disrupt life in their quiet community.

 

Sullivan City still harbors
a dream to build a vehicle bridge some day for its residents to cross, and have
discussed a twin-span crossing with room for both kinds of traffic. But with
support from officials across Hidalgo County and from the Mexican state of
Tamaulipas, Gonzalez believes his city will finally get an international
crossing. The only question remaining is what type – and when.

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