Worse to come for epic lines at Tijuana crossing

updated 9:26 p.m. ET July 21, 2008

TIJUANA, Mexico - It looks like any Southern California traffic jam — except you can buy a cappuccino and a 4-foot statue of Jesus from your car while watching dogs sniff vehicles for drugs.

This is the U.S.-Mexico border's most congested crossing, where local residents say already epic lines into San Diego have grown even longer since January, when the U.S. began phasing out a long-standing practice of allowing people they believed to be American citizens to enter by simply stating their citizenship.

Border guards now require most crossers to present a U.S. passport or other proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate — though they are still permitted to exercise their own judgment in order to keep lines moving. As always, Mexican citizens and other foreign nationals must show valid immigration documents to enter.

Longer waits may be coming
Still longer waits may be coming for people trying to get to jobs, homes, in-laws and weekend hangouts located on both halves of the border's largest metropolis.

As of next June, all U.S. citizens will have to present a passport or security-enhanced card, much like an electronic toll tag, to cross — or risk being waved out of line for a rigorous security check.

More than half the 21 million cars crossing from Tijuana each year wait 90 minutes or more, with a fourth stuck for more than two hours, according to survey data collected before the January rule change and published this month by Tijuana's College of the Northern Frontier.

At the crossing from Ciudad Juarez to El Paso, Texas, the second most congested border point, only 13 percent of the 16 million cars going north each year wait longer than two hours, it said.

The border crossing at Laredo, Texas, draws more commercial truck traffic. But larger and wealthier San Diego has one of the world's largest cross-border flows of people, with more than 130,000 heading north each day through the San Ysidro crossing and nearby Otay Mesa, opened in 1985.

Long waits cost money
Local officials estimate the long waits cost businesses in Tijuana and San Diego a combined $7.2 billion last year, in losses due to delayed freight, discouraged shoppers and work hours spent in line.

Still, the bottleneck has proved alluring for vendors, and the Mexican side of the crossing bustles with commerce — legal and otherwise.

"The saddle is real leather!" said street vendor Elias Segoviano, 29, waving a toy horse at a reluctant buyer queued up at the San Ysidro crossing. His pitch continued right up to the yellow stripe on the pavement marking U.S. territory.

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