SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
BROWNSVILLE — Celebrating what officials called “a historic investment in the future of the Rio Grande Valley’s space corridor,” TxDOT proudly confirmed this week that $192.4 million is now officially locked into the state’s 10-year transportation plan to widen State Highway 4, the only paved road between Brownsville and Starbase, with construction bids scheduled for fall 2027 and the finished four-lane highway expected to arrive shortly after every single person who currently uses it has already driven there roughly 4,000 more times.
“We heard the Valley, and the Valley said it wanted a real highway,” said a TxDOT spokesperson, gesturing at a rendering of a beautiful divided concrete corridor stretching from Oklahoma Avenue to LBJ Boulevard. “And in 2030, maybe 2031, weather permitting, the Valley will have one. The fact that traffic on Boca Chica has grown more than tenfold since 2019 is exactly why we’re acting with the urgency of a man who noticed a kitchen fire in 2019 and has just now located a fire extinguisher catalog.”
Crash Rates Respond Graciously to Announcement
Officials were quick to note that Highway 4’s crash rate runs one and a half to two times the state average, a statistic they say will be beautifully resolved by a highway that currently exists as a number in a binder in Pharr. The plan calls for replacing asphalt with concrete so heavy rocket-hauling vehicles stop devouring the pavement — a material upgrade engineers described as “crucial for the road we’re building after the current road finishes being destroyed.”
“The concrete decision is actually very forward-thinking,” said one Brownsville driver who asked to be identified only as Someone Who Drives Boca Chica Daily. “By 2030, the road will be strong enough to handle all the traffic that finished happening in 2027. It’s like buying a bigger oven for the Thanksgiving turkey you already burned.”
State Defends Timeline as ‘Technically a Timeline’
At a press conference, officials defended the schedule, explaining that putting $192.4 million into a 10-year plan and then waiting three years to even solicit bids is “a bold new model of infrastructure funding where the money and the road live separately, like parents who stay together for the highways.”
“A lot of people ask why we can’t start sooner,” the spokesperson added. “And we ask them: have you ever tried to widen the only road to a spaceport while everyone is still using it to get to the spaceport? Exactly. That’s why we’re going to do it later, when everyone is still using it to get to the spaceport.”
Until then, motorists on the 14-mile stretch can enjoy the existing two lanes, the narrow shoulders, and the quiet dignity of knowing that somewhere in Austin, their tax dollars have been formally, ceremonially, and completely theoretically set aside for them.
