Mexico-Bound Crossing Lanes to Open Thursday at New El Chaparral Station Sandra Dibble - San Diego Union-Tribune
go to original October 31, 2012

Aerial-view rendering of the U.S.-MX border complex upon completion. Lower left is the Mexican El Chaparral - above and more to the right is the U.S. border-crossing station. (sandiegoreader.com)

TIJUANA — Starting at 6 a.m. Thursday, Mexico’s federal government plans to route all San Ysidro southbound traffic into Tijuana through the newly constructed El Chaparral facility located west of the current lanes at Puerta Mexico.

Mexican officials said El Chaparral’s 22 lanes offer three times the previous processing capacity at San Ysidro for vehicles entering Mexico. The country’s customs agency is deploying 150 more inspectors to the new facility, in addition to 45 being transferred from Puerta Mexico, said Juan Tintos, Baja California’s tourism secretary.

Puerta Mexico is scheduled to be closed starting Thursday.

“In extraordinary cases of emergencies,” the Puerta Mexico lanes can be opened to relieve traffic, said Carlos López of the Baja California Secretariat of Infrastructure and Urban Development.

Vehicles must access El Chaparral through a five-lane, temporary access road that is two-tenths of a mile long and leads west from the end of Interstate 5. A sharp right-hand turn off the freeway has led to concerns among business groups on both sides of the border about traffic backups.

Baja California business leaders continued to express such fears Tuesday. The head of Tijuana’s Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, a business umbrella group, said in a statement that “the business community expects that Puerta Mexico will remain open until the viability of the new crossing is proven.”

Mexico federal officials have maintained that Puerta Mexico will close beginning Thursday. They could not be reached for comment this week.

Mexican customs officials have been testing El Chaparral since Oct. 24, at times even routing all traffic through the new facility. López said that typical waits during those times lasted three to five minutes.

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