Cibolo has assembled $68 million in federal, state and local funding for a bridge at FM 78 and Country Lane, where trains can hold up road traffic for as long as 20 minutes. The project would carry vehicles over the tracks instead of across them, addressing delays that affect drivers, school buses and emergency vehicles.
The intersection of Farm-to-Market 78 and Country Lane sees heavy traffic until a train comes through, according to KSAT. Jennifer Catlett, property manager of Val's Mobile Home Park and a nearby storage facility, told the station that drivers on Country Lane sometimes wait up to 20 minutes for trains to clear. She said school buses use the route and that delays can back up nearby roads.
Commuter Nayeli Esquilin told KSAT that the wait adds about 20 minutes to her work commute and said she believes the project would help ease traffic. Michelle Fiedler, also speaking to the station, said she expects construction to worsen traffic and considers the project a waste of money.
How the Funding Came Together
Cibolo applied for a $68 million grant from the Texas Department of Transportation to help cover the project, City Manager Wayne Reed said. The funding that ultimately came together breaks down as $55 million from the Federal Railroad Administration, $6.5 million from TxDOT and $6.5 million from the City of Cibolo, according to the same report. Union Pacific Railroad also signed a letter of support offering a financial contribution, though the amount has not been disclosed.
Reed said the city could not have taken on a project of this size alone. With the funding secured, the project has moved into planning and design, he said, and the bridge is projected to be built within the next five years.
What Gets Built, and What Changes for Drivers
The plan calls for a bridge over the train tracks, with vehicle traffic routed onto the span instead of crossing the rails at grade, Reed said. Separately, the Seguin Gazette reports that the Country Lane railroad crossing itself will be closed to through traffic as part of the project, which city officials frame as a safety move that removes a potential conflict point between roadway and rail traffic.
The FM 78 and Country Lane crossing is one of a dozen projects folded into a broader TxDOT grant program aimed at problem rail crossings, according to the San Antonio Express-News. As of that program's most recent update, TxDOT had not yet determined exactly how much funding each individual project in the batch would receive. The scale of the problem driving these grants is regional: the Federal Railroad Administration logged 235 reports of roads blocked by trains in Bexar County over the prior year, and Union Pacific has reported its average train length climbing to 9,890 feet, nearly two miles, up from 9,410 feet five years earlier, the Express-News reported.
How It Stacks Up to Other Crossings
Cibolo's overpass is not an outlier in cost. San Antonio's Rittiman Road grade-separation project carries an estimated construction budget of $45 million to $50 million, while the city's Walzem crossing project is estimated at $40 million to $50 million, per the Express-News. The Texas Transportation Commission has also approved $5 million toward a separate grade-separation project at South Zarzamora and Frio streets as part of a larger $160.4 million package for five rail projects statewide.
What the broader program and comparisons show
The Texas Department of Transportation describes the Federal-State Partnership program as funding capital projects on passenger rail lines intended to improve transportation performance, safety and mobility. That description explains the program’s goals, but does not specify a project-by-project selection formula. Separately, the Federal Railroad Administration says its blocked-crossing portal relies on voluntary public submissions; its figures, including the 235 reports cited above, count reports received rather than providing a complete tally of all blockages.
A separate San Antonio project offers a funding-award comparison, not a construction-cost benchmark: an Associated Press roundup published June 6, 2023, listed an award of up to $4,886,512 for the Rittiman Road Grade Separation Project.
This is not Cibolo's first attempt to solve its chokepoints with a bridge. Back in 2016, the city considered a $110 million, seven-mile toll road that would have run from FM 1103 at Wagon Wheel Way south to Interstate 10, with a design that included bridges over both FM 78 and the railroad tracks, according to the Express-News. The City Council voted 7-0 at the time to let the city manager pursue a partnership with the Texas Turnpike Corp., though that plan was built around traffic counts of roughly 17,000 vehicles a day on FM 1103 and up to 120,000 on Interstate 35 in the area. A decade later, the current, narrower bridge plan is the one that has actually secured funding and moved into design.
