Posted on 04/18/2014 12:38:37 PM PDT by Nero Germanicus
A groundbreaking plan for a privately funded international port of entry linking San Diego directly to Tijuana’s A.L. Rodriguez International Airport appears to have cleared its final hurdle.
It would allow departing airline passengers to park their cars in San Diego and walk across a bridge to board a plane in Tijuana. For arriving passengers, it would provide a U.S. Customs facility allowing them to circumvent lengthy border waits at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa.
The project’s U.S. developer, Otay-Tijuana Venture, has agreed to build the Customs inspection facility and pay for staffing, said R. Gil Kerlikowske, newly named commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“My understanding is that the Department of State notified the government of Mexico about the construction that will occur beginning in May,” Kerlikowske said Thursday in an interview before a binational round-table discussion hosted by the South County Economic Development Council.
The new port of entry, unique on the U.S.-Mexico border, is a for-profit private venture that would be financed through toll-paying ticketed airline passengers who fly into and out of the Tijuana airport.
Plans call for a 525-foot long pedestrian bridge leading from the Tijuana airport terminal to a 65,000-square foot structure on the U.S. side that includes an inspection area staffed seven days a week by CBP officers.
(Excerpt) Read more at utsandiego.com ...
Fly to Tijuana and walk to America. Ugh.
What could go wrong? :-)
Why build a pedestrian bridge over the border? There are plenty of tunnels crossing the border down there.
This should speed up the process of sneaking foreign terrorists into our country for the DemocRATS.
So, more confirmation that the left in California are brain-damaged. What are they thinking?
In other words, circumvent FAA Part 21 carriers for crap South American and Asian carriers that would make Asiana look competent, and pull business out of the U.S.
Tis makes sense, for a lot of reasons.
TJ’s Airport terminal is literally right on the border.
Parking your car in the US, and walking across saves the hassle of the almost always crowded border crossings, possibly saving hours.
For a bunch of reasons (fuel,TSA,taxes etc.), flying out of TJ can be MUCH cheaper than flying out of SD or LAX to a bunch of Latin/South American destinations.
There are US customs officers at Canadian airports for US bound flights so once the passengers land in the US it is like a domestic flight. The process is called preclearance.
Good. Since everything is so cheap and wonderful there, maybe lots of the parasite population will move home.
The rest of us are tired of paying for all the freebies they get from us.
Be nice if we could charge them for that as they walk South to try and have their cake and eat it too.
Yeh but the Canadians go back home. :-)
Does this project include enlarging/expanding the drug smuggling tunnels?
I understand they’re currently operating at about 128% of design capacity...
SD isn’t going to build a second airport. It would take 30 years to get through the enviro-nazi lawsuits.
How many decades did it take to get the runway extension alone done there?
I’m sure the “toll fee” is to break even for the customs cost, and the real (potentially BIG) profits will come from car parking in the much more secure USA.
The big benefactor of this is Volaris (basically Southwest Airlines of Mexico) started by America West CEO Bill Franke, and Indigo Partners, the same company that just bought Denver-based Frontier Airlines.
I forgot to add that the car rentals will also be on the US side, too, which will cut the theft rate, dramatically.
I could see this becoming a big deal in the next decade or so, with longer-haul flights from TJ to southern Mex/Latin and South America. (Which is likely exactly the Volaris plan.)
The catchment won’t really effect LAX, and it won’t mean a bunch of TJ-US flights, even with the Southwest/Volaris code share. It will pull from the SD catchment, southern LA burbs.
I could see Frontier adding a few flights, years down the road, to tie into Indigo-owned Volaris southbound flights, but not many.
They won’t go that way, there’s checkpoints. They’ll go all the other, easier, unguarded ways.
Security would be much higher if they had check-in on the U.S. side, with the bridge ending on the airside of the TJ terminal.
None of those pesky questions about illegal drugs....
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