Reynosa-Pharr Bridge Expansion will strengthen competitiveness
Tamaulipas
By Anallancy Ulloa
The expansion will facilitate international trade and consolidate the region as an attractive destination for the arrival of new investments.
The expansion will facilitate international trade and consolidate the region as an attractive destination for the arrival of new investments.
The Reynosa-Pharr International Bridge expansion, known for being the main perishable goods crossing point, is great news for the U.S.-Mexico border, especially for Tamaulipas and Texas.
The expansion project confirms the region's international trade vocation, and once it begins operations, it will strengthen competitiveness between the two border states.
The news of approval for the expansion of four additional lanes came after a brief period of lobbying the U.S. federal government on the urgency and necessity of this growth by city leaders, U.S. senators, and other key stakeholders.
This second section, to be built on the west side of the international crossing, will give Pharr a competitive advantage by adding additional lanes to completely separate trucks and cars, dedicating specific lanes for empty, full truckload, certified freight, and passenger vehicles, thereby increasing capacity and reducing wait times. With this permit, Pharr will now have an official door-to-door fast lane or set of fast lanes from Mexico to the United States.
INVESTING BIG FOR A FASTER CROSSING
Luis Bazan, director of the Pharr International Bridge, said this is a significant investment that will benefit all users at the end of the day.
Bazan explained that the additional four-lane bridge's construction would have a separation from the existing bridge of approximately eight to 10 feet; this will allow for a connecting lane to pass from one bridge to the other, both on the U.S. and Mexican sides.
"The best part of all this is that we will have greater capacity, and we will be able to give a greater performance to the cargo so that the truck enters and leaves the port as quickly as possible and be more efficient. This will eliminate waiting times, which has been the interest of the industry: not to have waiting times," explained Luis Bazán.
"We are preparing for what is to come in the future, and this will benefit both countries, both borders. It is important to highlight that Mexico is equivalent to 96% of the U.S. market; we are talking about nearly 96 countries with which trade is exchanged," he added.
As a result of this project, more projects related to installing warehouses and cold rooms are expected. In fact, as Luis Bazán mentioned, the clients themselves who use the international crossing are developing industrial parks in Pharr.
"This speaks of the demand that exists, that there is much more growth coming because there is more production. We see growth in the automotive sector, as well as in the energy, medical products, and construction industries," he said.
He also assured that every day the Pharr International Bridge becomes a more global bridge, and that is why the idea of growing and investing big was born.
EXCELLENT NEWS FOR PHARR
Ambrosio Hernandez, mayor of the city of Pharr in Texas, announced that the expansion project involves doubling the number of lanes on the bridge. Currently, there are four lanes, but when construction is completed, and the bridge is operational (estimated for 2023), there will be eight lanes at the international crossing.
The investment was 50 million dollars on the U.S. side. However, this is not the only investment that the city of Pharr has made, as they have already applied -since 2015- close to 45 million dollars prior to this project in infrastructure, preparing with roads such as the Military Highway, which is made of concrete; a bridge on one side of San Juan, Texas, which is part of the 365 Tollway in the U.S., which connects with the cities of Mission and McAllen. Also, they will begin construction of the International Bridge Trade Corridor (IBTC), which runs from the Reynosa-Pharr International Bridge northward and connects to Edinburgh.
The mayor of Pharr explained that this way, trucks would be able to get on this highway in both directions and avoid traveling on the streets inside the city since it surrounds the municipality. The next step is to choose the company that will be in charge of the bridge's construction, and the construction start date will be determined with the counterpart in Mexico, although it is expected to be during 2021.
This project will give Pharr a competitive advantage by adding completely separate truck and car lanes, dedicating specific lanes for empty, full truckload, certified freight, and passenger vehicles, thereby increasing capacity and reducing wait times.
With this permit, the city of Pharr will have an official door-to-door fast lane or fast lanes from Mexico to the United States.
Ambrosio Hernandez noted that a permit process could usually take several years before approval; however, this one was done in record time, as it was ready in two months.
Regarding the assignment of the lanes, and talking with the counterpart in Mexico, we have to agree as countries to define if we want the lanes to be used entirely for commercial crossings or to include light vehicles and crosswalks. It could be easy to divide how to use the eight lanes that the bridge will have at the end of this project," said Ambrosio Hernandez.
NEWS THAT BENEFITS TAMAULIPAS
Francisco Javier Cabeza de Vaca, Governor of Tamaulipas, said that this is the country's most important border state. It has 17 commercial crossings with the U.S., allowing this region to be considered the most relevant in foreign trade.
He mentioned that part of the government's actions are to continue promoting the construction of new international bridges or the expansion of the existing ones, as this allows Tamaulipas to have an additional dynamism to be more competitive.
"While it is well known that Nuevo Laredo is the border crossing with the greatest commercial movement in Latin America, we also have other important international crossings such as Matamoros and Reynosa-Pharr," said the governor of Tamaulipas.
The latter, in particular, stands out for being the one with the greatest movement of perishable goods in the country, surpassing even Nogales.
Carlos Alberto García González, Secretary of Economic Development of Tamaulipas, highlighted that the international bridge connecting Reynosa and Pharr ranks second in Tamaulipas in export and import activities.
"To have an idea, more than 3,000 cargo vehicles cross daily through this bridge in both directions; from 2016 to date, they have increased per year in imports and exports at a rate of more than 5% per year," said the official.
The state government made various efforts; for example, in 2018, with the customs trust, an investment of 700 million pesos was made in the fiscal precinct. The modernization allows serving a greater volume of cargo; however, there is still the pending matter of addressing the problems in the access road to the bridge.
"In addition to the investment made in 2018, another one for 288.5 million pesos is pending; with this simultaneously -as has been done on the other side of the border-, we will be able to have this bridge with double the capacity," García González assured.
The Pharr International Bridge's geographic location has been growing by leaps and bounds in terms of commercial crossings. The crossing allows all major highways to connect to Reynosa and arrive directly to the Pharr Bridge, such as Highway 40 that connects Monterrey-Reynosa; Highway 97 that comes from San Luis Potosi-Victoria-Reynosa, and in the U.S., Highway 281 that connects directly to the city of Pharr all the way to Canada.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Leonel Cantú Robles, Reynosa's Secretary of Economic Development, said that the execution of this project authorized by the U.S. presidency is related to the Mexican initiatives for its creation.
This is the vision for the future conceived long ago to consolidate Reynosa as the number one border in the eastern part of the country.
"This generates the platform for all our competitive advantages to be strengthened, as well as the infrastructure, which has to do with the chaining of various projects in the city that will detonate even more as a border to foreign trade," explained the official.
INDUSTRY
Salvador Domínguez, regional manager of foreign trade for Latin America at Emerson, commented that the expansion of this international crossing responds to the need that the bridge users -in general- had always expressed.
He commented that good efforts had been made to redesign the logistics and engineering within the current customs infrastructure on both sides of the border.
"I feel that all these changes occurred a little slower than the growth in industry volume and demand for bridge services, and at the end of the day, it created a bottleneck on the bridge itself. That is why the expansion of the bridge will definitely help the border flow to circulate optimally," explained Domínguez.
Also, he added that the maquiladora industry specifically, in which he has worked for years, opens an opportunity for customs to establish mechanisms such as express lanes or lanes dedicated to companies that are certified in AEO, VAT, C-TPAT, and that use commercial services certified in these same programs.
"This long-term expansion will be a very good thing, and I believe that as a port of entry, Reynosa-Pharr will generate a lot of competitiveness for the region and the industry; it will even help to make this area more attractive for future business investment," said Salvador Dominguez.
CUSTOMS AGENCY
In the opinion of Lorenzo Bermea, consulting and customer service manager of Agencia Aduanal Almanza Villarreal, this project will further detonate the region's development since the Pharr bridge has been saturated for several years. This expansion, he said, will be beneficial for both sides of the border, for the northern region of Tamaulipas and the country as a whole, since the largest amount of perishable products cross through this bridge. This will result in more traffic and more foreign trade operations in the coming years.
"This is a great announcement to start the year, and I believe it will bring great benefit for everyone," said Lorenzo Bermea.
Finally, he added that with this project to expand the bridge, companies would have more fluidity in their operations, impacting cost savings and the installation of more companies in the region.
