PRESIDIO — On Tuesday, state Sen. César Blanco put out a press release announcing that the agreement between the United States and Mexico allowing authorities to finish construction on the Presidio International Bridge had “been executed by the state of Texas.” The construction — which will add a lane on the northbound side of the bridge — is expected to wrap up in the summer of 2023.
The vehicle bridge connecting Presidio and Ojinaga is an integral part of the region’s economy and sees heavy traffic for its relatively small size. In 2022, almost 1.5 million pedestrians, car passengers and bus travelers crossed the bridge.
Discussion of expanding the bridge began in 2011, when city and county officials floated the idea of instituting a toll for Mexico-bound vehicles. That idea was scrapped, but a presidential permit was signed by the Trump administration in 2017 to greenlight construction to expand the American side of the bridge. The ribbon was cut for construction a year later — only to stall in August of 2020.
Since then, locals have suffered whiplash from a series of conflicting announcements from government entities. The Mexican government finished their part of the project shortly after American construction stalled — and hasn’t picked up since.
Part of the confusion is that the bridge is the only international port of entry owned by the state of Texas — Jake Giesbrecht, the port’s liaison to regional transportation authorities, once referred to it as “TxDOT’s only child.”
In February of last year, Mayor John Ferguson reached out to TxDOT for an update and was told that they were waiting on the governor’s signature on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Texan and Mexican authorities.
In April, Sen. Blanco’s office put out a press release implying that the MOU allegedly waiting on Abbott’s desk had yet to be drafted. In June, Giesbrecht told county officials that he expected “boots on the ground” by July 5.
July came and went, and in August, officials were notified that bridge construction hinged on signatures from Mexico’s Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SICT); American signatures had been outstanding for so long that the officials who had signed the agreement on the Mexican side had left office.
The MOU was signed by SICT in October, and city officials met with contractors in November, with a projected end date of February.
Now, two-thirds of the way through February, Sen. Blanco’s office was happy to announce that the project was “finally making headway” — leaving Presidio city officials scratching their heads.
“There’s been a lot of hearsay about where everything stopped or started,” said Ferguson. “The often-repeated thing was that it was on the governor’s desk, but that’s just speculation.”
Ferguson was hopeful that Blanco’s announcement was “the real thing.” When the project was first announced, construction was projected to be finished in the summer of 2019 — nearly four years later, millions of annual bridge-crossers are still waiting. “Hopefully, we’ll have a finished product by June,” he said.
Presidio County Judge Joe Portillo expressed relief and gratitude that the “overdue” project may finally be nearing completion. “Unfortunately, it was stalled, and what was a 13-month project turned into a four-year project,” he said.
“This is huge,” he continued. “This is big — this is exactly what we’ve been waiting for.”
