A key bridge along the United States-Mexico border in Texas will be closed to northbound truck traffic for two weeks to allow for upgrades on the Mexican side.
The closure of the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge will take place from Dec. 24 to Jan. 3, affecting around 1,600 northbound trucks a day, said Sergio Madero, director of the Chihuahua International Bridge Trust, the Mexican agency that oversees the region’s bridges.
The Ysleta–Zaragoza International Bridge is an international crossing connecting the U.S.-Mexican border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
“We are really in the process of modernizing the entire computing system of the border bridges of our users,” Madero said in a video conference. “New equipment is being installed, and it was also decided to carry out this maintenance in the loading lanes of the Zaragoza bridge.”
Madero said the $10.4 million project will tear up and repave the two commercial lanes, as well as modernize the bridge computer collection systems and add fiber optic lines.
“The most important part of all the work carried out on the bridges today is the modernization of the collection system,” Madero said. “What we had before is being retired, and a new, more modern system is being installed.”
During the two-week closure, trucks headed north out of Mexico for the U.S. will be rerouted to the Bridge of the Americas in El Paso, or the border crossing in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, Madero said.
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