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U.S. and Mexican officials working to establish interim connection from San Diego

Written by Sandra Dibble | SDUT
8:05 p.m., May 30, 2012

Mexico’s plans to complete its new El Chaparral port of entry south of the San Ysidro border crossing this year is creating a growing level of pressure for U.S. officials.

It comes down to timing: While Mexican officials say they are prepared to open El Chaparral by Nov. 1, the U.S. connection to that facility, which entails a $121 million project to reroute Interstate 5, hasn’t even been funded.

In terms of the scheduling, “we are nowhere near able to match Mexico’s proposal,” Ramon Riesgo, southern border project director for the U.S. General Services Administration, said Wednesday during a briefing for the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce.

The GSA is studying Mexico’s latest proposed solution, which involves building an interim five-lane connection from the United States to El Chaparral. A major concern is that a curve in the provisional route could slow traffic.

“We don’t want cars hitting the brakes before entering Mexico, creating a substantial queue on the U.S. side,” Riesgo said. For the proposal to be accepted, he said, it would “have to keep the current status or improve it.”

The timing issue has arisen after the United States initiated a $583-million expansion of the San Ysidro border crossing, which is being carried out in three phases. The first phase has been funded at $292 million, but the remaining two have not.

GSA is expected to compete its study of the interim strategy next month. But it can’t move forward without congressional funding for the project, estimated at $2.5 million. At the earliest, the interim fix would be completed by about May 2013, Riesgo said.

That leaves a six-month gap between the opening of El Chaparral and the completion of the U.S. connection. “That’s something that’s being discussed at a higher level,” Riesgo said, with U.S. Ambassador Anthony Wayne involved in the negotiations with Mexico.

In recent months, the timing disparity has raised growing alarm among business leaders and government planners in San Diego and Tijuana, who fear that lengthy southbound lines from the U.S. will lead to economic losses and greatly disrupt the lives of cross-border commuters.

Such concerns grew after Mexican federal officials said they would close the existing southbound lanes once construction of El Chaparral was finished. But earlier this month, Baja California Gov. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan announced that he had won assurances from Mexico’s Transportation Secretary, Dionisio Perez-Jacome, that the existing lanes would not be closed.

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For those of you who are confused (as I was) as to where exactly El Chaparral crossing will be - here is a good map. It looks like it will use the old commercial crossing area...

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