(The following article by Meena Thiruvengadam was posted on the San Antonio Express-News website on August 23.)
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — One of Mexico’s largest industrial conglomerates is lobbying for the construction of a $150 million, 62-mile rail line linking the United States and Mexico and easing congestion through Laredo.
The company, Monterrey-based Grupo Proeza, is the parent company of Toyota supplier Metalsa. Metalsa produces the chassis for the Toyota Tundra trucks that will be manufactured here.
Metalsa imports about 2 million auto parts from the United States each year for assembly at its Mexican factories. The products are then transported back to the United States for final assembly.
“Railroad traffic through Laredo is very saturated, and there are problems because the railroad goes right through the city,” Grupo Proeza Director and Chief Executive Enrique Zambrano said Wednesday during a Free Trade Alliance San Antonio luncheon.
The conglomerate, with an arm that supplies fruit juice to H-E-B, wants to boost its presence in San Antonio, but Zambrano said its ability to do that “depends greatly on the efficiency of border crossings.”
Blake Hastings, executive director of the Free Trade Alliance, said rail capacity through Laredo already is near its maximum.
Rail crossings through Laredo are growing at 9 percent a year. By 2009, an estimated 850,000 rail cars will cross through Laredo annually.
Union Pacific spokesman Joe Arbona said the railroad is seeing a level of demand unlike any it has seen in the past 60 years.
About 30 percent of the freight that moved through Laredo in 2002 was transported by rail, according to Bureau of Transportation statistics.
“The good news is trade is booming and business is booming, but we’re getting pinched on rail and truck operations,” Hastings said. “Laredo has basically become a choke point.”
A feasibility study on the new rail line, which Zambrano said would include the first rail bridge built in the United States since 1910, already is in the works for presentation to government officials in Nuevo León. Construction could begin as early as the middle of next year and be completed as early as 2009, Zambrano said.
Grupo Proeza’s challenge will be enlisting support from Texas and U.S. agencies, Hastings said.