HARLINGEN — City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez is scrapping a proposal to downgrade FM 509 from a highway to a roadway.
On Jan. 11, Gonzalez requested city commissioners hold off on a public hearing into a proposal to revise the city’s thoroughfare plan to downgrade FM 509 from U.S. 281 to FM 508 from a freeway to a minor arterial road, adding staff developed that proposal.
Meanwhile, Pete Sepulveda, Cameron County’s administrator who serves as executive director of the county’s Regional Mobility Authority, had expressed concern about the proposal to downgrade what he described as a “major international trade corridor.”
The city’s previous administration had designated FM 509 from U.S. 281 to FM 508 as a freeway, part of its Vision 2020 Comprehensive Plan’s Long-Range Thoroughfare Plan.
On Tuesday, Gonzalez said he had scrapped the proposal to downgrade the FM 509 stretch.
“It didn’t make sense,” Commissioner Frank Morales said Tuesday. “FM 509 is good transportation for traffic. Why do you want to downgrade it? The city’s going to grow.”
Funding study
On Wednesday, commissioners are expected to enter into an agreement with the Rio Grande Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization to help fund a study into the FM 509 corridor running from the Free Trade Bridge at Los Indios to Harlingen en route to the Port of Harlingen.
At part of the agreement, the agency would fund $200,000 while the city puts up $50,000, a city document shows, adding the study’s completion is set for December.
“It’s going to show what the projected route will be — it will probably expand the road,” Gonzalez said, referring to the study.
Now, the FM 509 corridor runs to the Port of Harlingen and Valley International Airport, located near the site of the city’s aerotropilis, a 480-acre area set aside to draw businesses.
The study could impact the area’s development.
“It will address what type of industry might use that particular road,” Gonzalez said about the study. “The Port of Harlingen is mainly industrial. It will provide connectivity to the aerotropolis, which will be light industry.”
Proposed roadway expansion
The study will focus on FM 509’s traffic volume.
As part of the study, the TEDSI Infrastructure Group, a Mission-based engineering firm, will “collect traffic data and evaluate the traffic impact on FM 509 in Cameron County,” the city’s document states.
“Due to the tremendous growth, safe and efficient corridors are even more of a local concern,” the document states. “FM 509 offers a direct connection from the Los Indios lnternational Bridge to Harlingen’s industrial parks and Valley International Airport. The study shall provide recommendations for roadway expansion, additional (right-of-ways), signal improvements, improved drainage and other related improvements.”
Dixieland, Fair Park, Altas Palmas extensions
Meanwhile, the city’s proposed ordinance aimed at revising parts of its thoroughfare plan would extend Dixieland Road from the frontage road to FM 509, turning it into a major arterial; extend Fair Park Boulevard from Commerce Street to West Spur 54, designating it as a major arterial; while extending Altas Palmas Road from Rodeo Drive to Garrett Road, turning it into a minor arterial.
The proposal would stretch Dixieland Road through San Benito, extending the roadway toward Brownsville to create a major thoroughfare running parallel to Interstate 69, Gonzalez said, describing it as a plan “to relieve congestion on the Expressway.”
Within the city’s core, the project to extend Fair Park Boulevard from Commerce Street to West Spur 54 would help streamline increasing traffic flow along one of the city’s major streets.
Now, officials are applying for grant money to reconstruct stretches of Commerce after landing a $5 million grant aimed at redesigning the roadway crisscrossing the city’s core.
Along the city’s booming west side, the proposed ordinance would also turn Altas Palmas, now a two-lane road running across a fast-growing residential area, into a minor arterial roadway from Rodeo Drive to Garrett Road.
Gonzalez said officials have not determined the proposal’s funding.
