Funding gap: More money needed for I-69 completion

The Rio Grande Valley is only about $340 million away from no longer being the largest metropolitan area in the United States not connected to the rest of the country by interstate.

The massive project to convert U.S. 77 and U.S. 281 to interstate-quality I-69 from the Valley to points north began several years ago. Driscoll, in Nueces County, has already been bypassed as part of the project, and right-of-way is being acquired to do likewise at Riviera in Kleberg County. Eventually passenger vehicles and commercial traffic traveling to or from the Valley will no longer encounter stop lights.

The only thing standing in the way of completing construction of the U.S. 77/I-69E portion all the way to I-37 near Corpus Christi is that three Kenedy County segments, involving six separate construction projects, have not been included in the Texas Department of Transportation’s 10-year Unified Transportation Plan (UTP).

So says Pete Sepulveda Jr., Cameron County administrator and director of the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority.

“The projects have been environmentally cleared and the right-of-way acquired,” he said. “But unless they’re included in the plan TxDOT can’t do any work on them.”

Read more: https://myrgv.com/local-news/2022/07/25/funding-gap-more-money-needed-for-i-69-completion/