The South Port Connector Project linking the Port of Brownsville to S.H. 4 is nearly finished and is expected to be handed over to the port by the contractor and in operation by the end of the year.
The $25.6 million, two-mile-long, overweight-capacity road is the first phase of the $100 million East Loop Project, which will eventually connect the port to Veterans Bridge at Los Tomates via an overweight corridor for heavy trucks transporting goods between the port and Mexico.
“It’s pretty much complete,” Port Director and CEO Eduardo Campirano said of the connector. “The contract I think calls for completion sometime in the middle of next month, but they’re a little ahead of schedule, so the project for the most part is just about finished.”
It will serve as the port’s only entrance on the south side and will maintain the same operating hours as the port’s existing Foust Road entrance: Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., he said. The port’s other entrance, from S.H. 550, operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Campirano said.
“Right now everything has to funnel into either Foust Road or the 550 entrance, so for people that may live on the southeast side of town, or people that need access to the south port, now they have a direct way,” he said. “It will be available for people that work here, or trucks that may be looking for another way, coming from another part of town. It’ll give us more ability to move more traffic in and out of the port.”
Campirano said the port will be monitoring traffic patterns once the connector is open to see how it’s working. The connector was originally intended to be the second phase of the two-phase East Loop Project but was moved to the front of the line in part because things were beginning to happen at SpaceX’s Boca Chica site, roughly 12 miles to the east on S.H. 4 as the crow flies, he said.
“We’re seeing a lot more activity at SpaceX, so this helps us be able to support their efforts as it relates to heavy cargo, big pieces of equipment that are coming into the port that are going to have to go out to SpaceX,” Campirano said.
The connector is also important to have in case of an emergency north of the ship channel requiring people to be evacuated to the south, he said. The project was a collaboration between the port, the county and the Texas Department of Transportation, Campirano said.
Pete Sepulveda Jr., director of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority, said the East Loop Project has been some three decades in the making, noting that the phase-one connector relocates the corridor “from an urban area to a rural area.” In 2009 the Legislature designated the route as an overweight corridor once it became a reality, he said. The next step is building the much longer link to Veterans Bridge, Sepulveda said.
“Right now we’re working on schematics and the environmental document, and then we have the local funds available to begin the final engineering and design, which probably will take about a year or so.”
The route will go from Veterans Bridge through the Southmost area of town and connect with F.M. 1419 before linking with S.H. 4 and the South Port Connector, he said, estimating that the entire project should be complete within five years.
“Now we have momentum,” Sepulveda said. “Now it’s going to be hard to stop us.”
