Laredo, TX
Stop on the proposed 17,000-mile maglev network. Next stop: McAllen, TX (119.5 mi).
About Laredo
Laredo is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat and largest city of Webb County, on the north bank of the Rio Grande in South Texas, across from Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Founded in 1755, Laredo grew from a village to the capital of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande to the largest inland port on the Mexican border.
Source: Wikipedia summary (full article). Population and facts as published there.
Cost breakdown (proposal-scale estimates — see math)
| Item | Basis | Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal construction | Mid-size terminal — 200K–1M catchment ($1–2B range) | $1.5B |
| Land acquisition | Regional factor 1.2× on $200M base | $240M |
| Track: Laredo → McAllen | 119.5 mi × $500M/mi | $59.8B |
| Annual operations (share) | Staffing, power, maintenance | $30M/yr |
| Stop total (excl. annual ops) | $61.5B |
Best terminal location (proposed)
the downtown Laredo transit center near the Juarez–Lincoln international bridge. The hemisphere's busiest land port deserves a passenger counterweight, and downtown is where the crossings, buses and commerce already meet. El Metro buses converge within blocks. The terminal would capture cross-border demand from Nuevo Laredo as well as Webb County.
Before / after
Aerial mock-up (illustrative, not an engineering rendering). Left: the proposed site today. Right: with the maglev terminal.
- Zapata — Falcon Lake gateway town on US-83.
- Rio Grande City — Starr County seat on the river corridor.
- Mission — Rio Grande Valley city at the corridor's eastern end.