It’s a good time to be a director here at the city. There’s a lot of opportunities and there’s definitely a lot of funding, it’s just the challenges of bringing on contractors and consultants to help us carry out the projects.
Doroteo Garcia Jr. had already been director of Engineering and Public Works for the city of Brownsville for several weeks when the announcement of his promotion from assistant city engineer came out Feb. 5.
The Brownsville Herald caught up with Garcia, a 20-year veteran of the city, to ask about some of the bigger projects on his department’s to-do list for the coming year and beyond. Some of the biggest ones have to do with either traffic or water — traffic signal synchronization and drainage projects specifically.
The department is finishing up a drainage study funded through the Texas Water Development Board that will allow the city to access state funds for drainage projects, he said, and the department recently solicited and received construction bids for culvert improvements at eight street crossings to alleviate flooding in West Brownsville.
“Then probably in the fall we should be advertising the construction for our Southmost Waterplein Park, which will help alleviate flooding in the Four Corners area,” Garcia said. “And then after that, maybe toward the end of 2023 or beginning of 2024, we’ll be advertising for construction of the Impala Pump Station, the lining of a portion of the north main drain ditch that leads to the pumps.”
The department in the next few months will also undertake several street-repaving projects that are part of the city’s current Capital Improvement Plan. Paid for through federal Community Development Block Grant funds, the street projects budgeted for the 2022-2023 fiscal year include Agua Dulce Drive, Agua Clara Court, Santa Fe Court, Burnett Road, Walnut Cove, Poplar Cove, Timber Drive, White Oak Lane, Pine Lane and Staples Circle. Milling and paving will begin on March 1, Garcia said.
The department’s project to synchronize traffic signals along the city’s busiest thoroughfares continues. It has already been implemented along a short stretch of Ruben Torres Boulevard and along Boca Chica from Four Corners to I-69E, producing a marked decline in traffic congestion, he said. The project is being done on state roads in conjunction with the Texas Department of Transportation.
“All of that is synchronized already, and that’s working really, really well so far,” Garcia said. “During peak hours we still run into some issues, but for the most part during normal operating hours, it’s really, really improved.”
Even where the streets have been synchronized, the traffic control cabinets still communicate with each other through radio signals, which works well enough but not as well as the 5G link that will be established once fiber optic cable has been installed, he said.
Nearly the entire Central Boulevard corridor will get new traffic control cabinets and synchronization, as will Alton Gloor Boulevard, Garcia said. Even “off-system” streets such as Price Road are eligible for TxDOT funding for traffic signal synchronization where safety is an issue, he said. TxDOT is able to measure how many car accidents at a particular intersection are caused by a lack of synchronization, Garcia said.
“Based on that data that they have, they prioritize our streets and tells us which ones are eligible (for funding),” he said. “We’ll be doing improvements on Price Road. There’s four intersections between Eden Drive to the expressway.”
Garcia estimated it will take 12 to 18 months to finish upgrading the control cabinets. It probably would have happened sooner but supply chain woes are causing huge delays in the delivery of the necessary equipment, he said, noting that the city was already years behind on upgrading its traffic signals.
“You can’t synchronize with old technology,” Garcia said. “Once we get these cabinets updated with current technology it’s a lot easier. TxDOT has a lot of funding available right now for synchronization.”
Funding is abundant these days in part because the American Rescue Plan Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021.
Still, it’s a double-edged sword, Garcia said. While his department suddenly has access to plenty of funding to hire consultants and contractors to get projects done, nearly every city engineering department in the country is trying to do the same thing at the same time.
“We have a lot of work right now,” Garcia said. “It’s a good time to be a director here at the city. There’s a lot of opportunities and there’s definitely a lot of funding, it’s just the challenges of bringing on contractors and consultants to help us carry out the projects. There’s so much federal money available right now.”
