TIJUANA – The car and truck crossings at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa are not only the busiest along the U.S.-Mexico border but also the most congested, according to a new study released yesterday by a Mexican government think tank.
In terms of northbound crossing delays, “the problem between Tijuana and San Diego . . . is the worst that exists on the border,” said Gustavo del Castillo, one of the
study's authors.
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Border traffic by the numbers
A recent study of vehicle crossings at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa found:
26: Percentage of northbound passenger vehicles that wait two hours or more at the border.
44: Percentage of northbound trucks that wait two hours or more.
1.87 billion: Dollar value of lost production in Tijuana each year because of border waits.
256 million: Dollar value of lost tax revenue in Tijuana each year.
SOURCE: Colegio de la Frontera Norte
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The study, by the Tijuana-based Colegio de la Frontera Norte, also reports that as commercial transactions have multiplied between the United States and Mexico all along the border, the border infrastructure has not kept pace, resulting in lost opportunities that are costing the economies of both countries billions.
Borderwide, an average of $38 million in commercial transactions and 31,766 crossings take place every hour, the study reports.
The purpose of the study is to identify and quantify the bottlenecks along the border, said Alberto Ortega Venzor, chief adviser in Mexico's federal Secretariat of the Economy.
“The flow each day increases, but the tube through which the flow must pass is growing smaller, and is getting reduced,” Ortega said.
More than a quarter of all northbound passenger vehicles and 44 percent of trucks experience wait times of two hours or more, according to the report.
For Tijuana alone, these lengthy translate annually into losses of $1.87 billion in production, 57,000 jobs, about $290 million in wages and $256 million in tax revenue.
Besides Tijuana-San Diego, the study focuses on three other major border-cross areas: Nogales-Nogales; Ciudad Juarez-El Paso and Nuevo Laredo-Laredo.
Similar economic studies have previously been conducted in the separate regions, but the new study is the first that looks at all in a comprehensive fashion, allowing for useful comparisons among cross-border communities, said Noe Aron Fuentes, another author of the study.
The Nogales-Nogales area along the Arizona border, for instance, has the shortest border waits of the four regions studied, but inspectors still must process large seasonal northbound flows of agricultural products from the Mexico to the United States.
On the Texas border, the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso crossings have the highest number of pedestrians.
The report recommends a series of measures to reduce northbound waits in the Tijuana region, including keeping all lanes open, especially during peak hours; operating mobile inspection booths; building new ports of entry; charging border-crossers fees and using the income to improve infrastructure.
Sandra Dibble: (619) 293-1716; sandra.dibble@uniontrib.com
