The next step in a big project seeing the renovation of the Bridge of the Americas may not be known until the third week of March.
By then a 45-day pause in the project instituted by the Trump administration will have concluded, with all parties hopefully having a clearer view of when work will begin on what is actually two bridges.
Connecting El Paso over the Rio Grande with Cuidad Juarez, the Bridge of the Americas was completed in 1998 and handles well over 10 million vehicles a year.
For years transportation officials have talked about the need to modernize the two bridges, with work appearing to be in the offing when the General Services Administration earlier allocated some $700 million in Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act funding.
An additional new challenge for the project has come in the form of a lawsuit centering on a Project Labor Agreement mandate for work on the bridges, a mandate that has since been rendered inoperable by the Trump administration.
“The fact is that we don’t know what is going to happen with the $700 million,” Omar Martinez, City of El Paso assistant director in charge of federal grant policy, recently commented to the publication El Paso Matters.
The idea that the project may be cancelled by the federal government in its larger cost-cutting campaign is a sobering thought for both city and State of Texas officials who have long worked to secure funding for the modernization project.
In 2008 a feasibility study was completed. But it wasn’t until 2022 and 2023 that the General Services Administration began to hold a series of meetings designed to solicit public input on the project.
An earlier 45-day pause in the project, which served as a comment period, ended in January, the same month that saw release of a final Environmental Impact Statement.
At that time, it was thought that actual work on the project might begin sometime next year, a schedule that is now in flux.
March 7, 2025
By Garry Boulard
Photo courtesy of City of El Paso
