Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes

Sonora's Highway 15 stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales to the border with the Mexican state of Sinaloa at Estación Don.

Kendal Blust/KJZZ

Francisco Javier Hernández is the director of the federal transportation department in Sonora. He says Highway 15 will be completed in November and comments about finishing in August were just meant to speed things up.

Mexican officials said earlier this year that a highway improvement project in the northern Mexican state of Sonora was slated to be completed by the end of August. But Sonora’s governor says that’s not going to happen.

The project includes improvements to the entire 400-mile stretch of highway from the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales, to Sonora’s southern border with the state of Sinaloa. About 70 miles of the project are still unfinished, mostly in the northern section closest to the border.

In May, the head of the federal transportation department said he wanted construction to be completed in August. But Sonoran Gov. Claudia Pavlovich now says that’s impossible.

But the August deadline was just supposed to speed up the construction process, says Francisco Javier Hernández. He’s the federal transportation director in Sonora.

“The transportation director wanted to accelerate the work," he said. "And it’s good that he did because it spurred all of us to pick up the pace so we can finish before the end of November.”

He says the real goal has always been to finish the project before Mexico’s current president leaves office at the end of November, and construction is on track to be completed by then.