(The following appeared on the Pacific Shipper website on January 12.)
Kansas City Southern filed an application on Dec. 30 at the U.S. State Department for a presidential permit to build a new rail bridge at Laredo, Texas, into Mexico.
The railroad already has an aging bridge there, which runs across the Rio Grande River between Laredo and Mexico’s Nuevo Laredo. KCS wants to build a new bridge under a proposed East Loop Bypass project that would route freight traffic around both cities, at a reported cost of more than $400 million.
KCS and Union Pacific Railroad route traffic over the KCS International Bridge, a single-track span that opened in 1920. A new double-tracked bridge could allow two-way train movements in a higher-speed corridor, and help restrain rapid growth of northbound truck shipments across that border.
The permitting alone could take a year or so, and KCS said it has already spent heavily on that process. Some sources say it could take another four years after that to have a bridge operating.
Earlier in December, the plan got a boost from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which signed an agreement with KCS that puts the project in the DOT’s Border Congestion Relief Program.
“The new railroad bridge and East Loop Bypass project would improve freight movement dramatically in the region by increasing rail transport capacity at the Laredo gateway and diverting freight vehicular traffic onto rail and off congested roads,” the DOT said.
Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said that as part of the congestion relief program, the Laredo project would receive priority access to some assistance programs, including loans and other financing.