The Federal Highway Administration has given the Texas Dept. of Transportation a green light to proceed with construction of the West Rail project in Brownsville, an estimated $85-million effort to relocate a Union Pacific Railroad line out of the heart of the city and away from downtown Matamoros, Mexico.
The project is a cooperative effort involving officials in both cities, the state agency, Cameron County and the Mexican government. On the U.S. side, improvements would relocate the existing railway from the U.S. 77-83 rail junction to a switching yard farther west, routing it south to the Rio Grande River just west of Brownsville.