R 041516Z AUG 08
FM AMCONSUL TIJUANA
TO SECSTATE WASHDC 7613
INFO AMEMBASSY MEXICO 
ALL US CONSULATES IN MEXICO COLLECTIVE
AMCONSUL TIJUANA

UNCLAS TIJUANA 000796 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: MX ECON ELTN PGOV PREL
SUBJECT: UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS: SAN DIEGO-TIJUANA EXPECT QUICK 
REDUCTIONS IN BORDER WAIT TIMES 
 
REF: A) TIJUANA 640 B 07 TIJUANA 1195 
 
 
¶1.      SUMMARY.  At the request of the Mexican Secretariat of 
Economy (SE), the San Diego Chamber of Commerce held a meeting 
July 31 to update the San Diego/Tijuana business community on 
progress in increasing capacity at the California ports of entry 
(POEs).   The meeting was well attended, including 
representatives from the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign 
Relations (SRE),  the Mexican Embassy in Washington, U.S. 
congressional aides, and representatives from the area's major 
business groups,  but the event revealed that  the region's 
expectations for border efficiency are unlikely to be met by the 
projects currently underway.   END SUMMARY 
 
SAN YSIDRO/EL CHAPARRAL 
 
¶2.      The San Diego/Tijuana area shares important economic and 
cultural ties, though neither city is as dependent on the other 
as some of the city pairs along the Texas border.  As a result, 
local efforts to lobby capitals for better infrastructure has 
lagged in comparison to the efforts of their fronterizo 
counterparts further east.  Still, among those who have an 
economic interest in ending the sometimes absurdly long border 
wait times at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa POEs, the issue can 
illicit passionate, and often unrealistic, proposals.   This was 
evident at the July 31 meeting hosted by the San Diego Chamber 
of Commerce.   The Chamber is continuing to push its "Border 
2010" goal to reduce border wait times at San Ysidro to ten to 
fifteen minutes by 2010, an idea it has advocated during its 
lobbying trips to Washington, DC and Mexico City (the Chamber 
and its supporters will again travel to Washington September 
2008).  Unfortunately, the Chamber does not have many concrete 
ideas on how to accomplish that, other than trying to ensure 
that California gets its "fair share" of the additional 5,000 
border patrol agents requested in the President's FY 09 budget 
and suggesting "stacked" lanes (i.e. two inspection booths per 
lane), an idea already incorporated in the General Service 
Administration's (GSA) and INDAABIN's (Mexico's equivalent 
agency) existing plans to expand and modernize San Ysidro. 
Another Chamber idea to eliminate the border itself and have 
border inspection stations at different intervals along 
Interestate-5, has neither been studied by engineers nor put 
into any detailed plans. 
 
¶3.      Also, the Chamber is not taking into account that GSA's 
three-phase project will not be completed until 2014 (four years 
after the Chamber's goal date), and it is not even clear if 
those expansion plans, which will increase San Ysidro from 
twenty-four to thirty-two lanes with five "stacked" lanes, will 
be sufficient to cut wait times as drastically as hoped.  Dr. 
Gustavo, from the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, which released 
in July a study on border wait times in four key POEs along the 
Mexico-U.S. border, pointed out that, if demand continues to 
increase at its current rate, the existing expansion plans are 
unlikely to be sufficient.   Moreover, efforts to make the POE 
meet the needs of the community are hitting obstacles.   The San 
Ysidro community has lobbied hard for a south-bound pedestrian 
bridge on the east side of the POE, which would significantly 
shorten the distance pedestrians would have to walk when 
crossing into Mexico.   Sean Cezares, from the SRE, admitted 
that the GOM could not agree to this plan yet, as it would 
significantly alter Mexican agencies' operations in the POE, 
though he is searching for an alternative proposal that all 
Mexican agencies could accept.  This issue was also discussed at 
length at the July 8 Border Liaison Mechanism.  GSA is concerned 
that failure to agree to the east-side pedestrian bridge could 
derail the entire project. 
 
OTAY II 
 
¶4.      Hopes for "Otay II", a proposed border crossing east of 
the existing Otay Mesa POE, are similarly a bit skewed.   Sean 
Cezares, from SRE, claimed that the GOM is ready to begin 
construction in 2009 and that it is the USG's bureaucratic 
inefficiency which is delaying progress.   Pedro Orso-Delgado, 
from CALTRANS, rightly pointed out that the Mexicans are also 
causing delays.  Most notably, the GOM has not been able to 
obtain the land on their side of the border necessary for 
construction.   (NOTE: while the GOM has put a five-year land 
usage restriction on the private owners of the land, the 
restriction expires in 2011 and, in any case, at least part of 
the land is being illegally occupied by squatters.  It is 
unclear how the local government or the GOM will resolve this). 
 Chamber members seemed previously unaware of the land 
acquisition issue on the Mexican side.   Orso-Delgado said that 
current hopes to begin construction in 2012 is based on an 
aggressive schedule that assumes the GOM can resolve its land 
acquisition problem and, perhaps optimistically, that a 
Presidential Permit can be obtained by October 2008. 
 
CROSS-BORDER AIRPORT TERMINAL 
 
¶5.      The much-discussed "cross-border terminal" at the Tijuana 
airport, which could relieve congestion at San Diego's 
oversubscribed Lindbergh Field, has had a bit more progress. 
Otay-Tijuana Ventures, a group of American and U.S. investors, 
including Grupo Aeropuerto del Pacifico which runs twelve 
airports in Mexico and Equity Group Investors out of Chicago, 
recently bought sixty acres on the U.S. side across from the 
Tijuana airport.  Mark Rowson presented this group's plan to 
build a "cross-border facility", which would allow passengers to 
park their car on the U.S. side, cross a pedestrian bridge, pass 
Mexican customs, then enter the Tijuana airport and pick up a 
flight.   Conversely, passengers arriving in Tijuana would cross 
the bridge, pass through U.S. customs, then pick up their car or 
obtain other ground transportation on the U.S. side    The group 
plans to hire a consultant to pursue the presidential permit 
process, but his claims that the permit process could be "fast 
tracked" could be raising unrealistic hopes that the project 
will be completed shortly. 
 
¶6.      COMMENT: Organizations like the San Diego Area Chamber of 
Commerce have the right idea in arranging trips to Washington 
and Mexico City and are discussing hiring a lobbying firm. 
However, while they are understandably frustrated with federal 
bureaucracy,  they are too quick to blame the USG for all the 
bureaucratic delays in moving the projects forward, and seem 
unaware that local community activists and complications on the 
Mexican side also cause problems.  The GOM clearly sees using 
organizations such as the Chamber as a key strategy to pushing 
their border infrastructure agenda forward in Washington, 
sponsoring meetings such as this one and never failing to send 
an SRE representative to each and every border meeting in the 
region.  So far, they have not had the results they hoped for. 
If the U.S. economy continues to slow, there might be some 
short-term relief in wait times at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, but 
the region will have to be patient for more drastic relief. 
 
 
KRAMER