April 25, 2019 500 AM
FAR WEST TEXAS – An All Aboard America charter bus carried “stakeholders” of the Big Bend region, including mayors, city administration, Border Patrol, judges, commissioners, and more for a Tuesday ride from Alpine to Presidio. Through the course of their journey, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and consultants from CDM Smith proposed their latest ideas for improving Highway 67, and the stakeholders pointed out their local perspectives on the 142-mile corridor that spans the border to Interstate 10 west of Fort Stockton.
Over the course of two years, and dozens of meetings with the public and local officials, the state agency hopes to decrease accidents that occur along roadway. A pedestrian accident on 67 in Alpine killed one person this month, and there have been multiple fatalities on the curving, high speed roads between Presidio and Marfa and in Paisano Pass between Marfa and Alpine.
In Texas and the United States, the single most common road accident is single-car, run-off-the-road accidents, according to Chris Weber, the Tx-DOT Area Engineer based in Alpine, and “about two thirds of accidents in the nation happen at curves instead of straight-aways.”
As the bus departed Marfa for Presidio, Weber began with practical solutions to car accidents, announcing over the bus intercom, “If we can get a higher percent of people staying in their lane, we can reduce crashes and in turn, fatalities.”
To understand how TxDOT plans to do that, Houssam Ghandour, an engineer on the project, explained, “Since not all will slow down to the safe speed limit, it’d be better to have a change in the geometry of the curve.” For TxDOT, this means adding a tilt to the lanes by raising the outside of the curve, like a less dramatic Nascar track.
The Highway 67 Master Plan is expected to be complete near the end of 2019, and will include a variety of potential “concepts” for the roads that span from Presidio to Fort Stockton. These “concepts” propose alternatives for each area of road where the public and TxDOT officials have identified problems like traffic jams, bad sight lines, driver fatigue, and lack of safety for pedestrians and bike riders. According to Weber, when making a Master Plan for Highway 67, “if we do everything right, we end up with a long list of unfunded projects.”
In fact, TxDOT can’t lobby the government for funding for particular projects, and the variety of projects they will propose in the finalized plan range in price and timeline, from short term—under five years—to long term, 30-year projects. From there, it’s up to the stakeholders and the communities to decide which projects in the plan are right for them—and to decide how they might begin funding those projects.
As the bus wound by Cibolo Creek Ranch, Vicky Carrasco of Kleinman Consultants in Presidio proudly pointed out a newly-minted, expanded shoulder by Elephant Rock, an imposing geological feature on the west side of the highway. Two locations have new paved shoulders, courtesy of the local TxDOT officials, who consider this a short-term project.
Drivers can stop to photograph, rest, or deal with car troubles, like the VW that was parked there, changing a tire as the bus flew by. The paved pull-offs are one of the first improvements done in direct response to Big Bend residents providing their input on the highway project at meetings that began in 2018.
These projects are little victories for TxDOT, which can incorporate some of the work, like paint striping the four-way stop in downtown Marfa and adding shoulders, into their routine maintenance budget, rather than waiting years for grant funding to come in.
Jennifer Wright, a TxDOT Public Information Officer, noted it “was lightning fast for this to happen during the ongoing study.” The other new pull-off on 67 is near the Profile of Lincoln, a rock formation that resembles America’s sixteenth president.
Presidio County Commissioner Brenda Bentley was considering her constituents’ needs along the road from Presidio to Marfa. She was most interested in creating more passing lanes, “and having a rest area between Presidio and Marfa. Only because it’s such a long drive, and there’s elderly people who have to get to the doctor—and the closest doctors are in El Paso or Odessa. I think it’s important for them to be able to pull over and rest or go to the restroom.”
Passing lanes and signage that indicates how close the next pass is have been added between Marfa and Alpine, and Alpine and Fort Stockton already. Small changes like this keep drivers from making illegal passes, which can prove dangerous on curvy roads where you can’t see far ahead to predict oncoming traffic.
The Master Plan will be finalized in the Fall, but current drafts presented reveal tiered proposals for projects that could be short term, mid-term, or even long-term projects, with the long term forecasts predicting regional growth in the Big Bend – a growth that by 2040 would strain the current infrastructure if nothing is done.
In the past, TxDOT had a more prescriptive behavior that brought in changes to communities based on what the department thought was best for the area. But these days, Weber describes a shift. “We’ve changed our approach to be more aware of where we are, who we’re dealing with, and what we can do to help them.”
Wright agreed, saying, “A corridor plan is about identifying improvements that can one day be projects. Here it will be up to the local communities to let it be known what they want, and to help come up with a funding plan.”
This philosophy has spawned three bus tours, multiple working group meetings, and three rounds of public input meetings taking place across Fort Stockton, Alpine, Marfa, Presidio, and Fort Davis.
The department is seeking public input at its third and final round of meetings in Fort Davis on June 24, Marfa on June 25, Alpine on June 26, and Presidio on June 27. As part of those meetings, Ram Maddali of CDM Smith stated, “We’re looking at business open houses—keeping it open during daytime so people can come if they can’t make it in the evening.” The group in intent on capturing as much public comment as possible, boasting a massive binder of comments from every meeting.
Fort Davis, where there’s a meeting in June, isn’t even along Highway 67, but they are seeing an increase in commercial trucking that leaves 67 in Marfa, and changes over to Highway 17, which takes them straight through Fort Davis. Companies like Solitaire, a manufactured home company out of Presidio with a twin plant manufacturing operation in Ojinaga, Chihuahua, must go through Fort Davis, because a low clearance underpass on the west side of Alpine keeps commercial vehicles from passing through town.
By afternoon, the bus had arrived for a presentation and breakout sessions at the Presidio Activity Center. There, Presidio City Administrator Joe Portillo said that business from Presidio isn’t the only factor driver increasing commerce on
67. “In speaking with the port of entry director in Mexico, we’re expecting an increase in traffic from commercial businesses coming from Chihuahua, using the expanded port of entry, beginning this summer.” Estimates suggest that daily commercial vehicle traffic could quadruple through the Port of Entry.
A previous TxDOT study entitled “La Entrada al Pacifico,” completed in 2008, focused on commercial traffic projections, and examined how feasible it was to drive commerce through the Presidio Port of Entry. In a 2007 TxDOT press release, Amadeo Saenz, TxDOT’s assistant director for engineering operations said, “The purpose of this study is not to promote a trade corridor. It is to assess the potential of a trade corridor and forecast trade flow at the Presidio Port of Entry.” Ten years on, the commerce has arrived, and its likely path is directly up 67, through Marfa, and on to Highway 17.
Time was also spent discussing Port of Entry relief routes, because the bridge backs up, especially during the holidays. Recently, lines to Ojinaga have backed up all the way to the Presidio Lely Airport. TxDOT proposals included opening a lot for parking that would divert crowds to wait off the road. Another idea was to re-route bridge traffic to not pass through Presidio’s main area, by perhaps moving the line to Erma Avenue, or Puerto Rico Street.
The breakout sessions also yielded new ideas for incorporating pedestrian safety along Highland Avenue in Marfa, as well as potential features along Highway 90/67/San Antonio. One idea discussed by Marfa Mayor Ann Marie Nafziger, and Planning and Zoning member Peter Stanley is to “bulb out” curbs at street corners, so that pedestrians have a shorter distance they have to walk to get across the road safely. Similar bulbs were added in Alpine already, along Holland Avenue. The bulbs do not reduce street parking space, but do make pedestrians more visible to drivers on the road.
“I think we need more controlled crosswalks in town. In Marfa, people are walking across the streets to restaurants and shops, and there’s no stops for traffic from the four way to the courthouse,” Nafziger opined to the officials. “If we could get people to cross the street at the same place, and warn drivers to slow them down, we’re starting to mitigate the safety risks.”
Carrasco also dedicated time to discuss out-of-the-box thinking—big ideas that were thrown around by the consultants. The group discussed creating bike or multiuse trails built on utility easements—along a pipeline easement toward Presidio, or a path for pedestrians to walk or bike along one of the train rail easements.
They’ve spoken with the two railroad companies, and although Union Pacific, which controls the rails between Marfa and Alpine, has a policy against it, Texas Pacifico Transportation was more open to it. Their right of way is owned by the state, and goes from Alpine to Presidio. Carrasco added, “When you think of this as a large regional landscape, with people who are into mountain biking and extreme conditions in the area, that might be an option.”
Throughout the day, officials reminded the stakeholders that big plans, like adding a developed rest stop between Marfa and Presidio with a restroom, picnic tables, improved landscaping, and more, should be considered long term projects that could take over 20 years to come to fruition.
It’s a long road ahead for many of the proposed plans, but an expected growth in population and commerce means the community should begin to take action now.
As the day drew to a close at the Presidio Activity Center, and stakeholders waited to board the bus to head north on 67, TxDOT Public Information Officer Wright summed up the Master Plan, and the lengthy process often required for large scale, longterm government projects, saying, “It’s like planting a tree.” The payoff may take years, you may never see it reach maturity, but Wright believes it’s a worthwhile endeavor.
