Good News Along the Border
September 8, 2016
The Daily Record
by Joe Nathanson
Daily Record 2016 09-08 Good News Along the Border
“I felt compelled to devote this column to regions other than greater Baltimore — regions further south, as far south as the U.S. border with Mexico.
What prompted me was recently reading in Cityscape, an online blog, about a planning director who was working to develop a biking trail that would connect the center of his small city to the cultural heart of a neighboring city located about eight miles away.
This sounds like a worthy endeavor and a seemingly achievable goal. What captured my attention was the fact that the planning director, Mauricio Ibarra, is a resident of Brownsville, Texas. He does his professional work for the city of Matamoros in Tamaulipas state, Mexico. Ibarra, a native of Matamoros, is one of 12,000 commuters who travel between the two cities each work day. He travels over the Brownville and Matamoros International Bridge, one of four international bridges across the Rio Grande carrying people and commerce between the two countries….”