Storm gathers over trade corridor

April 23, 2007

By BILL HANNA, STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

ALPINE -- There are signs on U.S. 67 on the edge of town saying the highway is part of "La Entrada al Pacifico" corridor, but until recently most locals paid little attention to them.

That changed last month when a series of public meetings about the proposed 812-mile trade corridor from the Mexican port of Topolobampo to Midland-Odessa brought the proposal into sharp focus.

Instead of a vague plan, residents were alarmed to learn that the route could be finalized in a little over a year.

Visions of hundreds of big rigs rumbling down the streets of Alpine and Marfa, bringing gridlock and pollution, created an uproar in the Davis Mountains communities, pitting the interests of the tourism-minded Big Bend region against the economic dreams of Midland-Odessa.

"I moved out here to take walks and read poetry and now I find myself up at 11:30 at night on the computer reading the Truckers News as I'm trying to understand how this could happen," said Fran Sage, a retired college professor who moved here from Austin and helped start the local chapter of the Sierra Club more than a decade ago.

Officials with the Texas Department of Transportation and the Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance, or Motran, have been promoting the route for more than a decade. They tout it not only as another way to get goods from China into the United States but also as a shorter route for Mexican imports headed to Dallas-Fort Worth.

The county judges from four Big Bend counties -- Brewster, Presidio, Jeff Davis and Culberson -- recently sent a letter urging the state to consider a more westerly route that hugs the Rio Grande and avoids Marfa and Alpine, but that idea received a lukewarm response from Motran and the state consultant.

"I'm not sure we would ever redesignate the route," said Brian Swindell of HDR Engineering in Dallas, which is conducting a feasibility study for the Department of Transportation. "We might select another alternative corridor, and that could be rail or another roadway, but La Entrada is a federally designated route. It would literally take an act of Congress to change it."

James Beauchamp, president of Motran, which has long championed the corridor as a way to diversify the Permian Basin economy, said La Entrada has been designed to use existing roads. Bypasses would likely be built around Marfa and Alpine, but he said the county judges' proposal for a new route would require new roads.

"It's not up to us," Beauchamp said. "Business and commerce will decide where the trucks go."

Reliever route

What no one is sure about is how many trucks will eventually arrive.

The roadway has been touted as a "reliever route" for ships backed up at Pacific ports.

At its peak, Beauchamp estimates, a total of 200 additional trucks a day will cross at Presidio.

Yet John McCray, an associate professor of strategic management at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said La Entrada is being promoted on a faulty premise.

McCray, who studied Mexican and Chinese trade for 20 years, said it is still more efficient to ship Chinese goods to Long Beach, Calif., than any other Pacific port. Any spillover will likely go to Oakland or to Canadian ports that have efficient rail lines to Chicago, the destination for many Chinese imports.

Lastly, the port of Topolobampo is far from ready to handle large shipments, and the port of Ensenada, south of San Diego, is a more convenient option for Asian imports and closer to major rail lines, McCray said.

The idea that some truckers may choose to travel from Chihuahua City to Presidio to reach North Texas may have some merit, McCray said, but those vehicles would have no reason to stop in Midland-Odessa.

"It's a political deal," McCray said. "As I look at TxDot today it almost runs scared when the rich and powerful come calling -- the politics drive the studies. That doesn't mean the trade isn't going to flow through there, but there has to be some added value to make them stop. You have to remember those trucks are going to want to go to Dallas-Fort Worth. You'll have to give them some reason to stop."

Beauchamp said the Midland-Odessa region hopes to carve off a small piece of that trade.

"We're not looking at being Dallas-Fort Worth," Beauchamp said. "There are niche markets out there, and we're looking to diversify our economy. Even some of the smaller ventures would be significant for our economy, which has long been dependent on oil and gas."

The Transportation Department says that it has reached no conclusions and that the feasibility study will look at both the rail and truck options as well as a "no-build option," Swindell said.

Rail option

Most residents in Alpine and Marfa would rather see La Entrada redevelop the South Orient rail line that runs from Presidio to San Angelo.

The line is now leased from the state by Texas Pacifico but is in such bad shape that trains can't go faster than 10 mph, said Transportation Department spokesman Mark Cross, who added that it would cost $70 million to repair the track from Presidio to Alpine and $140 million to repair the entire line so trains could travel at 45 mph.

"The biggest industries in this region are tourism and real estate," said John Wotowicz, a former investment banker who moved to Marfa from New York a year ago. "Trucks are not in agreement with this model. It is a flawed economic model. Rail makes far more sense."

But state Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, calls repairing the South Orient rail line an expensive proposition and predicts that it would be a hard sell in the Legislature.

Mexican officials, meanwhile, insist that rail is part of the plan.

In last week's Big Bend Sentinel, Armando Correa, chief engineer in the department of industrial development for Chihuahua state, said plans are moving ahead for rail.

"The trucks are going to be delayed if they are to come," Correa told the Marfa newspaper. "Traffic on the railway will be coming sooner."

Harold Hunt, a research economist at the Texas A&M Real Estate Center, has toured the entire route in Mexico and also believes the truck option is less viable than rail.

"I still think rail is better than truck on the Mexican side," Hunt said. "If you could tie into Chihuahua City, then you would be into the system. Of course, the question is what benefit would that provide to Midland-Odessa, but if you could build a spur up from the South Orient line to Midland-Odessa then they might have something where you could build an intermodal system. The problem with rail on the U.S. side is finding the funds. Right now there don't appear to be any."

With all of the uncertainty, residents are vowing to fight the proposal any way they can.

At a March 19 meeting in Midland, Ray Hendryx, president of the Alpine school board and owner of Alpine's two radio stations, said the truck issue has hit a nerve in a way that hasn't been seen since another Midland company, Rio Nuevo, and the Texas General Land Office proposed to pump water out of underground aquifers and send it to Texas cities.

"Until now, I thought that the Rio Nuevo water plan was the only thing that could unite redneck ranchers and tree-hugging environmentalists," Hendryx said. "Amazingly, it's happened again. We didn't ask for this fight, but I can assure you that we will do whatever it takes to keep the General Land Office, Motran, TxDot or anyone else from ruining our way of life."

IN THE KNOW

By the numbers

6,616: Trucks crossing at Presidio in 2006

773,265: Trucks crossing into El Paso in 2006

150: Trucks estimated to cross daily at Presidio in three to five years

200: Trucks expected to cross daily at Presidio once the La Entrada corridor is completed

SOURCES: U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Midland-Odessa Transportation Alliance