Office of Operations Freight Management and Operations
Table of Contents

1. Project Background

Cross border movement of people and goods is a vital part of the North American economy. Accurate real-time data on travel times along the US-Mexico border can help generate a range of tangible benefits covering improved operations and security, lower costs for travelers (both personal and commercial, reduced environmental impacts, reduced negative impacts on adjacent communities, and, of course, increased economic activity for both countries.

Congestion creates delays that result in wasted fuel and exacerbate noise and air pollution for communities adjacent to the crossings. Accurate travel time data can help travelers make more informed decisions regarding which crossing to use and when to use it, thus saving time and fuel and making it less likely they will encounter congestion delays. Just as travelers save time and fuel, these savings will be passed on to local communities.

Accurate travel time data can also help operators, including transportation agencies, customs and immigration agencies, and private crossing operators, make more informed operating decisions such as the assignment of staff (e.g., from secondary inspection to primary inspection), or the opening of additional toll or inspection lanes to accommodate surges in demand. Such data also can support improved planning both along the border and for the transport network that provides access through Mexico and the US. Planning decisions would include facility design or layout modification that would ease the congestion at a particular crossing.

Further, accurate and timely delay information is a useful public policy tool. Not only can it more convincingly make the case for needed improvements in areas such as infrastructure upgrades and increased staffing, it can be a powerful planning aid for transportation and compliance agencies, as well as businesses. These data can also be a very helpful means to educate border crossing users of the benefits of engaging in better planning, and those associated with expedited crossing programs.

The current quality of data on border crossing delays is mixed. Border agencies often rely on visual observations of the vehicle queue or a manual data collection process (driver surveys or time-stamped cards) to provide an estimate of total wait time. Unfortunately, these approaches are costly, inconsistent over time and from location to location, and do not take advantage of existing technology to monitor traffic movement.

In October 2007 The Federal Highway Administration tasked the team of SAIC and Delcan to conduct a three-part assignment to assess technology for the measurement of travel times for trucks through the Otay Mesa international border crossing into the US. The primary goal was to evaluate the ability of one of two technologies to accurately record travel times through the border zone.

The ultimate objective for the project was to put in place an automated system that had the potential to provide data of sufficient value and reliability to become a long-term solution for border stakeholders, and replace the labor-intensive and imprecise manual methods currently in use. By facilitating the deployment of a system at Otay Mesa, FHWA hopes to provide leadership in the effort to produce information that can support improvements in operations at border crossings, and to demonstrate the viability of such systems for implementation at other locations.

The three parts of the study were to:

  • Examine two candidate technologies for installation and testing at the Otay Mesa crossing, and recommend one for testing;
  • Conduct an assessment of the suitability of the selected technology to provide accurate border crossing travel time data; and
  • Gather one year's worth of travel time data at the crossing to establish a historic database for future use.

The Otay Mesa crossing is a truck-only crossing between the US and Mexico south of San Diego, California. At the onset of the project the port served an average of 2,500 vehicles per day inbound into the US. Over the last several decades, the crossing has seen an increase in the amount of traffic, and as a result, the amount of time necessary to cross into the US has been perceived to have increased for the average trucker. Rather than assess the accuracy of that perception, this project was focused on evaluating the ability of a technology solution to accurately measure the time it takes a truck to pass through the border.

1.1 Study Part I – Comparative Technology Examination

The first part of the project involved the comparative examination of two candidate technologies. The FHWA directed the study team to catalog the relative capabilities and potential shortcomings of each, and recommend one for implementation and use during the test. These technologies were:

  • Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR). ALPR applications seek to identify, catalog, and track individual truck movements using optical image capture and re-identification. ALPR systems record a combination of registered license plates and USDOT numbers, use optical character recognition (OCR) to resolve images into strings of characters, store these character strings in a central database, and compare them to subsequently captured and resolved character strings in order to re-identify individual vehicles. Travel time can then be calculated directly for individual vehicles using the time elapsed between sequential successful "reads." ALPR systems typically consist of cameras mounted either along the roadside or on elevated structures (a pole, for example), tied to a central processor through various communications media. Each camera requires a power source and data transmission capability, and depending upon the configuration, OCR processing may take place at the camera location or at the central processing system.
  • Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS applications, particularly in the form of commercial feet management systems, are becoming more commonplace. Motor carriers typically rely upon such systems to locate individual trucks in order to more effectively manage dispatch operations, and to provide "visibility" regarding shipment status to customers. GPS systems rely upon a long-used navigational technique called triangulation to locate assets. GPS-based systems come in different forms. Among the most common types used for commercial trucking are transceivers that transmit data through the cell phone network or via satellite to report location and time information. The location and time stamp information from successive system reports can then be used to travel time.

These technologies and the methodology used to compare their characteristics for use at Otay Mesa are discussed in detail in Section 2.1. During this process, the study team consulted with local and national stakeholders to examine key functional characteristics and the operating environment at the crossing. These activities are described in detail in Section 2.2.

1.2 Study Part II – Technology Viability Assessment

Once the technology was selected, the study team oversaw its deployment at the Otay Mesa crossing and captured travel time data at volumes significant enough to provide the opportunity to examine the output of the selected system to determine its viability as a travel time data source.

This critically important portion of the project involved several significant activities, which are detailed in Sections 2.3 and 2.4 of this report.

1.3 Study Part III – Compilation of Historical Travel Time Data

Once the technology was selected and deployed, the study team captured data to catalogue average travel times for a period of one year. This was done to capture historical data that could be used for a variety of purposes, including as a basis of comparison for assessing future delays. Detailed information regarding how the study team accomplished this activity is provided in Section 2.5.

The remainder of this report details the approach, findings, conclusions, and recommendations formulated during the project.

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