Guest Column
Absurd Third Port of Entry between Tijuana and San Diego
By Jesse Fimbres
While waiting for over an hour in line at the Otay border crossing, late on a Tuesday night, it made me think and somewhat angry. No, actually very angry. It is ludicrous that our politicians, Washington officials, customs and border protection management, are thinking about opening a third border crossing when they are underutilizing the current infrastructure.
Dear border administrators, et. al. the long wait at the border can EASILY be solved! It takes a little bit of thinking, but not much. So instead of paying millions of dollars on all kinds of studies in planning for the third border crossing in the area, I hereby give you free advice.
These four very simple solutions will do the trick.
- Maintain all, and I mean ALL lanes open 24 hours a day. If the “gates” are open 24/7 the flow will be such that it will be more difficult for lines to get very long. Doing this will avoid the lines to start getting long in the early morning when the daily dread begins.
- Change the “idiotic” “non-sensical” policy of closing lanes when a vehicle has to be walked by the inspector to secondary inspection. Here a little simple idea, if it is a must that the inspector has to “walk” the suspect vehicle to secondary, send an other inspector to that gate, so that the traffic can keep flowing.
- It is totally understandable the there will be zeaolus and overzealous inspectors. But if a rigorous search or investigation of a vehicle is needed. PLEASE send those vehicles to secondary inspection within a minute or two, instead of holding up hundreds of cars for five minute or more at times. If there are one hundred cars in line and the lane is closed for five minutes, that is 500 minutes. Eight hours twenty minutes LOST and that is assuming there is only one passenger per vehicle.
- Retrofit current facilities so that if traffic flow falls under two cars per minute or some other “intelligent” number, or if a lane is over 50 cars long, a second inspector can work concurrently in the same lane. This would double the flow in any lane with minimal investment.
I know that there is a labor cost involved by having all the lines open 24/7, but the cost to the local economy is much greater by not doing anything, or coming up with ridiculous solutions to the problem like the third port of entry. Oh, by the way, third port of entry will require more inspectors too!!!
- Bold Solutions are needed for bold problems. No one can afford the millions of hours that people spend waiting to cross the border, as well as the millions of gallons of gasoline that are burned while waiting.
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- Jessie Fimbres lives in Point Loma a community within San Diego
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