SPECIAL REPORT: TxDOT plans to tear down Resler, Sunland Park freeway overpasses

The Texas Department of Transportation continues to juggle two construction projects on the Westside: the Go 10 project and the Border West Expressway.

“Instead of inconveniencing people for three to four years, it just made sense to get in there and do it one time, accept the pain and move forward,” said TxDOT’s Chief Engineer in El Paso, Bob Bielek.

As a result, traffic tie-ups, long commutes, and detour after detour have become an everyday occurrence.

The Border West Expressway will connect to Transmountain and the Go 10 project will add 5 miles of frontage road along I-10 in West El Paso.

They are being done concurrently to save time, but that also requires highway closures. ABC-7 has learned the two biggest closures will be next year, but first TxDOT wants to make sure the alternate routes are completed.

“What we’re trying to do is over the next six months get the Doniphan to Paisano connection and the McNutt to Paisano connection open again so Westsiders will have two additional alternatives to get into town or get East,” Bielek said.

Those alternate routes will be necessary because the Resler overpass has to be taken down and replaced. “Resler is not quite as bad. It’s also a steel structure but it’s only over I-10. So we can probably get that done in a weekend shutdown or maybe three days,” said Bielek.

The big one will be the Sunland Park overpass which is already popular with drivers going to and from the Sunland Park area to Sunland Park Mall.

“It’s not only over I-10, it’s over the existing Sunland Park bridge, which will be widened as part of the Go 10 project. So, trying to take that down is probably going to exceed what we can do in a weekend, so it may be an extended period of shutting down I-10. But that’s why we’ll want to have as much of the alternative routing that we can possibly have in place before we do that,” Bielek said.

Bielek knows firsthand how painful this process has been and will be. He commutes from the Westside everyday and he’s confident it will all be worth it in the end.

“For awhile El Paso has kinda been a limiting factor on commerce into Texas because of the condition of I-10 because we don’t have the frontage roads and we don’t have a loop around El Paso. So as we are getting all of these completed and can really get into fixing I-10, not only will El Paso be a much better place to live and to work but also won’t be that restricting valve on commerce into Texas,” Bielek said.

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