City Council Talks Potential Toll For Bridge Of The Americas

On any given evening, thousands of borderland drivers find themselves waiting in lines at El Paso’s international bridges. For years, El Paso’s City Council has been saying those wait times are simply too long.

So what’s the plan? And could it include bridge tolls?

Oddly enough, all eyes were on a pair of Washington D.C. lobbyists at Tuesday’s city council meeting. John Montgomery and John O’Donnell were hired by the city to come up with a kind of plan of attack to address the wait times.

But tucked away in their PowerPoint presentation was the idea of basically tolling El Paso’s Bridge of the Americas, near the Chamizal National Memorial in south El Paso.

The crossing, known as BOTA to many, is the city’s biggest and busiest, and some on City Council feel it could generate as much as $16 million per year for El Paso.

City Rep. Courtney Niland said the money could help the federal government hire more Customs and Border Protection Agents to help open more bridge lanes.

The millions could also be used to beef up infrastructure at the city-owned Paso Del Norte and Zaragoza ports of entry, or for construction of an entirely new bridge dedicated to commercial traffic.

Niland told ABC-7 that the wait times hit El Paso where most cities hurt the most: in its wallet.

“We have people waiting three hours on our bridges to come spend money in our community,” she said. “Three hours!”

The city does not own the BOTA and, therefore, cannot impose tolls at the crossing itself.

Niland said, instead, the city can work with the Texas Department of Transportation to toll the “approaches” to the bridge, or the roads leading to it.

The toll talk was part of a larger proposal presented to the city council. The lobbyists also recommended the city form a new wait times committee composed of representatives from CBP, TxDOT, the office of El Paso Congressman Silvestre Reyes and El Paso’s business community.

Some on council, including City Rep. Steve Ortega, said they’re tired of committees and task forces.

“At this point, I think the proof is in the pudding,” Ortega said. “The reality is …if we were to grade our bridge wait times in 2007? We’d get an F. 2008? F. 2009? F. 2010? F.”