Cornyn visits El Paso to talk about transportation issues

today. he’s in town to talk about the borderland’s transportation challenges with experts at utep. abc-7’s ashlie rodriguez is live with details. ashlie? senator cornyn says our number one challenge is getting enough money for making border trade and traffic as efficient as possible. he says texas only gets back 92-cents on every dollar we send to washington as part of the gasoline tax. but new legislation will help supplment that money. cornyn spoke with mayor oscar leeser– and former txdot commission chair ted houghton– as well as state. rep. joe pickett. this is video of the senator touring utep’s center for transportation lab– where they test infrastructure material durability and develop techniques to make projects more affordable. researching these new technologies is something the “drive act woul fund, which cornyn talked about. the “driv act” is a transportation fundin bill that cobbled together an additional $46 billion dollars– he says border cities such as el paso could really use: so not only does el paso have the unique challenges with roads and bridges and the like. its got a unique challenge with unique needs when it comes to making sure that we have our ports of entry and our transportation infrastructure developed staffed in a way that keeps legitimate trade and traffic flowing and growing our economy on both sides of the border. the drive act passed the senate– but not the house. if the two chambers can’t agree on the bill and fail to do anything– they may have to pass another short-term transportation funding extension in october– putting long term projects in el paso on hold. the dona ana county jail director is firing back at sheriff