Expressway light outages irk TxDOT, local communities

LA FERIA — Street lights along Expressway 83 between La Feria and Pharr are still out, 11 months after a Valley Morning Star report on many of the same outages in December 2008.

Texas Department of Transportation’s Transportation Director Jesse Leal estimated that about 98 lights are out between Pharr and La Feria, some individual and some part of entire burned-out circuits.

“If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Leal said. “You fix one thing and another one goes bad.”

He said state highway officials have not yet activated two full circuits in La Feria as electrical work is still pending from expressway construction that ended in June but has not yet been finalized by TxDOT.

“I’m hoping within the next month or so we can start wrapping up that project all together,” Leal said about the La Feria project.

TxDOT officials say that, in terms of other cities with outages, the department fulfilled its responsibilities by installing lights after expressway construction was complete and say that, under pre-construction contracts, maintenance now lies in the hands of the cities.

“If (the cities) don’t fix them, the main threat we have is to remove (the lights) but who’s going to do that?” Leal said. “You’ve made your investment and now you’re going to take them down because (the cities) won’t fix them?”
Leal said another option is that TxDOT can fix the lights and charge the cities for the repairs.

“But right now, we’re so short-handed that we can’t go out there and do it without putting some of our stuff on the back burner,” he said.

Road widening and revamping was done in 27 separate projects along Expressway 83, Expressway 77 and Expressway 281 over the last two decades, TxDOT officials said.

Leal said significant outages begin in Alamo, which has 15 to 20 light outages. Donna has about 15 outages as do Weslaco and Mercedes, he said.

“If you’re seeing 15 or more (lights out) the rule of thumb is that it’s an entire circuit and usually that signals a bigger problem,” Leal said. “It’s either a blown fuse or a breaker’s been tripped. And that’s what we try to zero in on when we see the large sections being out.”

A section of about 15 lights on Expressway 77 in San Benito that have not operated properly since construction was completed in December 2008 are being serviced by TxDOT, department officials said.

“TxDOT has assured me that they’re going to get the contractor to go back,” San Benito Assistant City Manager Chuck Jalomo said. “Once those lights are in operation, we will take over (responsibility for them.)”

In Donna, City Manager Oscar Cuellar left a message through his secretary on Nov. 9 saying that the city had already hired a contractor to fix its lights and that the outages would be repaired within a week.

Mercedes assistant City Manager Michelle Leftwich said the city hoped to have outages repaired within the month.
She said she placed calls with AEP and TxDOT about the lights.

“But if we find out that (AEP) is not going to take care of them, we’ll hire a contractor, get three bids and get them fixed by the end of the month,” Leftwich said.