Completion of Border West Expressway is delayed further

The Border West Expressway project should have been finished by now, but plenty of work still needs to be done.

The $600 million project is the construction of 5.6 miles of highway from Racetrack Dr. in El Paso’s Upper Valley to the area of Santa Fe St. downtown.

Portions of the highway will be tolled, but before any of that can happen the project needs to be completed.

Construction began in 2015 and was supposed to be finished by late 2017.

Now TXDOT says the projected is expected to be finished by May of 2019.

Bob Bielek, TXDOT’s El Paso district engineer, says crews recently ran into problems during the construction of the highway across from UTEP.

Five culverts needed to be placed underneath some railroad tracks, but as TXDOT was digging they were hitting large rocks that would push the railroad tracks up.

TXDOT had to stop and wait for Union Pacific to remove the section of track so txdot could put the culverts in.

Bielek says it was a problem that pushed the project back.

“And because of the fact that their crews (Union Pacific) were only available at certain times that couldn’t all be done at once,” Bielek said. “It really took a day to do one of those, so they had to come back several times and it actually ended up costing a couple of months on the schedule.”

Even with all the delays Bielek says that as of now the project is still within budget, but that it could increase slightly down the road.