ALPINE — Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) representatives, Alpine City Council members and Brewster County Judge Greg Henington met last week to discuss a feasibility study TxDOT is currently conducting on two of Alpine’s low railroad crossings.
Prompting the study is the Union Pacific Railroad underpass on U.S. 67/90 approximately a quarter mile west of FM 1703, which measures 13.7 feet in height and has been the cause of several incidents this past year. The Texas Pacifico underpass closer to the middle of town, near the triangle gas station measuring 14.7 feet in height, is also included in the study.
“Both of these are lower than the required 18 foot 6 inches that is per design standards for a Texas highway freight network,” said Liza Amar of engineering firm CDM Smith.
According to TxDOT, there have been 16 crashes at the 13.7 foot underpass in the past decade, with the largest number of crashes per year — five — occuring last year. In October of 2023 a tractor trailer hit the bridge and knocked down an outer steel beam. Amar explained that the issue was not only a safety concern for motorists and pedestrians, but a financial one, citing hours local law enforcement officers spend redirecting traffic after every incident.
When incidents occur, traffic has to be temporarily rerouted through Fort Davis or the Mosley Loop, a residential area south of Alpine.
A TxDOT spokesperson said existing construction documents for the 1933-built Union Pacific Railroad bridge and 1937-built Texas Pacifico bridge do not specify the reasons the underpasses were built with such low clearances. Semi-trailers in the 1940s stretched up to 11 to 12 feet tall, TxDOT said, while standard modern trucks are closer to 13.6 feet tall.
The low clearances led TxDOT to initiate a 12- to 18-month, phased feasibility study that is set to be completed by May. For now, discussions are largely preliminary and funding for the project — which will come from state and federal sources, according to TxDOT — has not yet been secured.
“There’s no funding, there’s no active project, there’s no construction date set — we’re just currently looking at how we can mitigate the current underpasses that we have,” TxDOT El Paso District Project Manager Jose Bocanegra said.
The ongoing feasibility study will produce short, mid and long-term solutions. Short-term solutions, taking place within five years, will likely include bolstering signage and installing more advanced warnings of the clearances. Possible midterm solutions, taking place between five and ten years, include increasing the height of the underpass by digging the roadway deeper or creating a bridge to go over the tracks. A potential longer-term, 10-year-plus solution involves constructing a bypass to divert truck traffic north or south of town, avoiding Alpine entirely.
The “stakeholder outreach” phase of the plan is taking place this spring, beginning with presentations to local officials. Public meetings to solicit citizen feedback are forthcoming but have yet to be scheduled. Union Pacific Railroad is involved in providing feedback for the feasibility study, a TxDOT spokesperson said.
County Judge Greg Henington told The Big Bend Sentinel each possible solution comes with its own drawbacks, and a lot of data gathering is still required. “No matter which way you go there’s a thousand questions,” Henington said. “What are the pros and cons of going under? What are the pros and cons of going over? What are the pros and cons of not doing anything? What are the pros and cons of building a bypass?”
“We didn’t get a lot of meat on the bones on this one,” he added about the initial meeting with TxDOT engineers and project managers.
How truck traffic would react to each solution is among Henington’s concerns. If clearances were upgraded would that increase truck traffic in Alpine, negatively impacting the relatively pristine tourism corridor of the tri-county area? Would a potential bypass — which Henington warned would be highly controversial, fraught with everything from environmental to eminent domain issues — harm Alpine economically if less people were traveling through?
“At the end of the day, truck traffic isn’t going to go away,” Henington said. “The question is, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to embrace it, slow it down or prevent it?”
Hengington said tough decisions are on the way, but he believes Alpine’s local voice will have influence on the issue, and he is interested in hearing “rational, thought out” ideas from the community. “I’d really like to deeply involve the community and hear what they have to say about it,” he said. “They’re the ones driving it every day.”
A recording of last week’s meeting with TxDOT, Alpine City Council and Henington can be found on Alpine City Council’s youtube page.