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SAN DIEGO鈥擜round lunchtime two days before Donald Trump鈥檚 presidential inauguration last month, some 200 business and civic leaders from San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, gathered here in a hotel ballroom downtown for an event hosted by the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

As the assembled professionals, decked out in business-casual attire and speaking a smattering of Spanish and English, munched on cold鈥攏ot to say rubbery鈥攃hicken and green salad and sipped iced tea, the event鈥檚 keynote speaker, a UCLA economist named Lee Ohanian, delivered a pessimistic message about the man who was on everybody鈥檚 mind.

Trump鈥檚 plan to tax imports from Mexico would amount to 鈥渟hooting [us] in the foot,鈥� Ohanian declared, 鈥渨ith many, many unintended consequences.鈥� Given the aging of the baby boomers and declining U.S. birth rates, Trump鈥檚 possible plan to reduce immigration levels would make it 鈥渆xtremely difficult鈥� to achieve increased productivity or GDP growth, he warned. But Ohanian wound up his speech on a positive note: Trump seems like a 鈥減erson who tends to change his mind,鈥� he said. The crowd laughed nervously.

For the people who do business in Tijuana and San Diego, talk of barriers鈥攚hether it鈥檚 tariffs or even 鈥渂ig beautiful walls鈥濃�� is anathema. They know that the health of their 鈥渕ega region,鈥� as San Diego鈥檚 Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer calls it, depends on enhancing the economic integration of the two cities that collectively boast a population of 5 million. (Roughly half live on each side.) One of the most dramatic examples of their commitment to that entwined economy is a bridge that literally crosses above the border fence.

In late 2015, a terminal connecting San Diego to the Tijuana airport opened. Funded privately by American and Mexican investors, the Cross Border Xpress has created the world鈥檚 first truly binational airport. Each day, thousands of passengers from San Diego now walk easily across the border directly into the Tijuana airport. Conversely, people landing in Tijuana now walk into San Diego after their flights. The project is a striking physical manifestation of the increasing interconnectedness of the two cities.

It wasn鈥檛 always this way; in fact, as recently as 20 years ago, San Diego, a Southern California city long dominated by a major presence of the U.S. Navy, felt more of a gravitational pull from the north than the south. 鈥淪an Diego was [still] deciding what it wanted to be. We looked north and decided that we did not want to be Los Angeles, or worse a pretty suburb of Los Angeles,鈥� recalls James Clark, the executive director of the Smart Border Coalition, a civic group that advocates for improved border crossings. San Diego looked south and discovered its sister city, Tijuana, had become a manufacturing powerhouse. 鈥淭ijuanese were spending money in our stores, restaurants, museums and theaters. We had families that lived on both sides of the border, went to school on both sides of the border, attended church on both sides and were truly bicultural, bilingual and binational.鈥�

Signs of integration abound. You can hear it in the impeccable Mexican-Spanish pronunciation that even many Anglo San Diegans possess; the city to their south is named 鈥淭ee-hwana,鈥� not 鈥淭ee-a-wanna,鈥� they remind visitors. You can see it in many of the city鈥檚 neighborhoods, where Spanish signage is everywhere. And most of all, you can see it at the border crossing in the southern San Diego neighborhood of San Ysidro, the world鈥檚 busiest land border. It鈥檚 a sprawling, hectic scene, as thousands line up on foot and in cars to make what for many is a daily crossing from M茅xico to the United States and vice versa.

It wasn鈥檛 always this way; in fact, as recently as 20 years ago, San Diego, a Southern California city long dominated by a major presence of the U.S. Navy, felt more of a gravitational pull from the north than the south. 鈥淪an Diego was [still] deciding what it wanted to be. We looked north and decided that we did not want to be Los Angeles, or worse a pretty suburb of Los Angeles,鈥� recalls James Clark, the executive director of the Smart Border Coalition, a civic group that advocates for improved border crossings. San Diego looked south and discovered its sister city, Tijuana, had become a manufacturing powerhouse. 鈥淭ijuanese were spending money in our stores, restaurants, museums and theaters. We had families that lived on both sides of the border, went to school on both sides of the border, attended church on both sides and were truly bicultural, bilingual and binational.鈥�

Signs of integration abound. You can hear it in the impeccable Mexican-Spanish pronunciation that even many Anglo San Diegans possess; the city to their south is named 鈥淭ee-hwana,鈥� not 鈥淭ee-a-wanna,鈥� they remind visitors. You can see it in many of the city鈥檚 neighborhoods, where Spanish signage is everywhere. And most of all, you can see it at the border crossing in the southern San Diego neighborhood of San Ysidro, the world鈥檚 busiest land border. It鈥檚 a sprawling, hectic scene, as thousands line up on foot and in cars to make what for many is a daily crossing from M茅xico to the United States and vice versa.

Today, the mayor of San Diego says, the relationship between Tijuana and his city is 鈥渋ncredibly strong.鈥� The numbers tell the story. According to a 2014 study from the University of California, San Diego鈥檚 Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, the region has a gross annual product of more than $220 billion. Some 70,000 commercial and vehicular northbound crossings are made each day. (Tens of thousands of those are commuters鈥攕ome of them American citizens鈥攚ho live in Tijuana and work in San Diego.) The area has become 鈥渢he largest region for medical device manufacturing鈥� in the world, says Faulconer, who explains that because of increasingly complex binational supply chains, 鈥渟ometimes [one product] will cross the border two to three times.鈥� UCLA鈥檚 Ohanian pegs the figure far higher: In some cases, he suggests, a product can cross the U.S.-M茅xico border an astonishing 14 times before it goes to market. One study suggests that the average good exported from M茅xico to the U.S. contains 40-percent American-made components. In the San Diego-Tijuana region, Solar Turbines, Kyocera International and Taylor Guitars are just a few of the companies that have facilities on both sides of the border.

To help bolster this burgeoning cross-border relationship, the region has undertaken some unusual binational infrastructure initiatives in recent years鈥攁nd not just at the Tijuana airport. Most important, construction is now underway on a new land border crossing to the east of the extant traffic-clogged gateways; one designed and partially funded with local money from San Diego County鈥檚 regional governments, and which will be paid off through tolls. The new border crossing should be open before the decade is out, and鈥攂ackers say鈥攖he benefits to the regional economy will total in the billions. Regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office, San Diego and Tijuana are betting that 鈥渂ig league鈥� binational infrastructure investments will pay off.

Flying into San Diego is an undeniably thrilling experience. The busiest single-runway airport in the country, still known to many by its original name, Lindbergh Field dates to 1923. It鈥檚 hemmed in by a bay, steep hills and the skyscrapers of downtown. (That the airport was named for a notorious anti-Semite is actually among the least of its problems.) Already operating at near capacity, handling some 20 million passengers a year, the airport simply cannot expand鈥攖he topography won鈥檛 allow it. Noise restrictions, meanwhile, limit the hours at which planes can take off and land. Lindbergh鈥檚 short runway also limits the size of planes it can accommodate, and therefore the length of its routes. And to top it off, pilots say the obstacles around it make the airport one of the most challenging in the country to land at.

Local businesses and residents have complained for years that they鈥檙e being hemmed in by Lindbergh鈥檚 limitations. Many with international destinations have long been forced to travel up to Los Angeles International to catch flights鈥攁n often congested journey of 125 miles.

Starting back in the 1960s, San Diegans began thinking about replacing Lindbergh. But it wasn鈥檛 until around 1990 that local leaders began seriously casting about for solutions. Initially, they looked south. That year, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), a regional transportation planning board made up of 18 cities and the San Diego County government, proposed building a binational airport that San Diego and Tijuana would share.

It was an intriguing idea: It just so happens that Tijuana鈥檚 airport sits on the northern M茅xico border, directly across from a fairly undeveloped and largely flat section of eastern San Diego called Otay Mesa. (Otay Mesa also already has its own small airport used for private planes called Brown Field.) The idea was that the Tijuana airport would expand north, into San Diego. A 1990 booklet promoting the idea called for 鈥渟eparate terminals and customs [on either side of the border]鈥� along with 鈥渟hared runways, taxiway and control tower.鈥� Mexican authorities shot down the idea, however.

A year later, a Republican San Diego city councilman named Ron Roberts鈥攑erhaps not coincidentally, an architect by trade鈥攎ade a similar proposal, one he dubbed 鈥淭win Ports.鈥� As the Los Angeles Times reported, 鈥淩oberts' proposal calls for a 12,000-foot runway and terminals to be built on the U.S. side of the border, adjacent to Tijuana's international airport ... The twin airports would operate separate arrival and departure terminals, customs checkpoints, immigration, agriculture and other inspection facilities. The only permanent physical feature crossing the border would be a taxiway linking the two parallel runways.鈥� Similar proposals were debated in the ensuing years.

Ultimately, the binational issues involved made building a dual runway San Diego-Tijuana airport all but impossible. The legal issues involved in aviation are complicated enough domestically, but having to deal with two countries鈥� aviation laws and regulations in a single airport proved too high a barrier鈥攑articularly in the wake of 9/11. Then, in 2006, another possible solution to Lindbergh Field鈥檚 woes was scuttled when a referendum, promoted by SANDAG, which would have relocated the San Diego airport to nearby Miramar Marine Corps Air Station went down in a heavy defeat. (That proposal was doomed as soon as the Marines came out against it鈥攜ou don鈥檛 mess with the military in San Diego.)

What to do?

Around the same time, a new idea began being seriously discussed by Mexican and American authorities and business leaders. Rather than build a runway on the northern side of the border, what if San Diego simply constructed a new terminal, which would provide access to the Tijuana side of the border? That would provide all of the benefits of a binational airport, but without the headaches of runways and taxiways crossing international borders. And better yet鈥攚hat if the project could be completed using private funds? That made the idea particularly appealing in a traditionally tightwad, conservative area like San Diego.

Investors on the American and Mexican sides of the border were interested. A group of them (including the Chicago-based magnate Sam Zell, who drove the Tribune newspaper chain into bankruptcy) formed a new company, Otay-Tijuana Ventures, LLC, and acquired the land on the north side of the border for about $30 million.

While the project was privately funded, the city government took the lead on promoting the new solution and getting the necessary approvals. San Diego 鈥渁dvocated strongly in Washington, D.C. and M茅xico City for the project,鈥� says Jen Lebron, press secretary and director of digital strategy for the city of San Diego. That paid off in 2010 when the U.S. State Department greenlighted it. The city government also offered what was crucial for getting the project off the ground: permitting. In 2012, it officially granted land-use permits and building permits for the facility. In 2014, construction commenced.

In December 2015, the Cross Border Xpress (CBX), a 65,000-square-foot facility opened to its first passengers. It鈥檚 about 20 miles south of Lindbergh Field and downtown San Diego. A grand opening ceremony, featuring appearances by the mayors of San Diego and Tijuana, was held in April. Total costs were $120 million. (Alas, even the private sector can suffer from cost overruns鈥攊nitially, costs were pegged at about $80 million.)

The handsome facility, designed by the late Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, evokes openness: Taking advantage of the San Diego-Tijuana climate, it even has an outdoor garden featuring desert plants. It鈥檚 built to serve a capacity of 2.5 million passengers a year; the Tijuana airport handled roughly 6.3 million flyers in 2016, meaning that CBX could end up serving about a third of the passengers who use the airport. The pi猫ce de resistance of the facility is the purple 390-foot bridge that crosses the national border鈥攊ndeed, it passes right above the black border fence. It鈥檚 the world鈥檚 only truly binational airport with commercial service鈥攖wo Swiss airports are accessible from France, but their facilities sit wholly within Switzerland.

The elegant simplicity of the idea is apparent when one visits. The firm that built the CBX explains it this way: 鈥淧assengers departing from the U.S. park on CBX property, enter the building, check in, walk over the border using the new bridge, and literally descend into [Tijuana airport] to reach their flights. Returning passengers land at [Tijuana], take the bridge across the border, enter the U.S. through the new [U.S. Customs and Border Patrol] facility, and emerge from the CBX to take their preferred form of transportation.鈥� Passengers pay a fee鈥攗sually around $16鈥攖o use the facility. (That鈥檚 how the private investors make their money.) And one has to possess a valid boarding pass to use it.

Elizabeth Brown, the chief commercial officer at CBX, joined the project in the summer of 2015, just a few months before its opening. She鈥檚 essentially in charge of the terminal now. A Canadian citizen, Brown鈥檚 previous assignment had been eight years at the Montego Bay, Jamaica, airport. (Brown, a cheerful presence, is a good sport: When I tell her my luggage had been pilfered at Montego Bay few years back, she chuckles apologetically.)

Brown says that after a little more than a year, CBX has been a wild success. In fact, the only real snag so far has been a result of that success: There isn鈥檛 enough parking. Today, about 5,000 people use the CBX daily, with roughly equal traffic heading north and south. On January 2, CBX had a record 10,000 passengers pass through the facility. Tijuana airport, for its part, has room to grow. Unlike Lindbergh, it operates 24 hours a day, and airlines are reportedly considering adding additional service.

Given that no public transit yet extends to the terminal鈥攈ey, this is Southern California鈥攖he lack of parking is a real problem. The facility has already expanded its parking capacity once, because the city of San Diego government, ever supportive, allowed a temporary parking permit. More expansion is in the pipeline: The city of San Diego has also provided permitting for a new parking garage and hotel abutting the facility.

Brown says that, at least in part, the CBX is catering to demand that already existed. 鈥淔orty-five percent of people going to M茅xico from Southern California use the Tijuana airport,鈥� she reports. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 more than [Los Angeles International] and [Lindbergh Field] combined. In the past, they鈥檇 just drive across the border.鈥� That might have worked going south, but for return trips, it was a potential nightmare. Given the San Ysidro border crossing鈥檚 notorious congestion, simply crossing into San Diego after a flight could add hours to the journey. Locals used to complain that crossing into San Diego often took longer than the actual flight into Tijuana.

Today, when using the CBX, that border crossing is just about seamless. In fact, I enjoyed a demonstration of this. When I arrived at the terminal to meet Brown, she was about to land on a flight into Tijuana from M茅xico City. She sent a text message when she arrived at baggage claim; less than 20 minutes later, Brown emerged onto the San Diego side, having already picked up her bag and cleared customs. (鈥淚 swear we didn鈥檛 plan this!鈥� one of her colleagues said.)

There鈥檚 no evidence that Lindbergh Field, which maintained a studied neutrality about the CBX, has been hurt by the advent of the bridge. After all, the number of passengers arriving and departing out of San Diego continues to slowly rise. Again, a significant portion of people who use CBX would simply have driven over to Tijuana in the past. And indeed, as Universiy of California, San Diego economics professor Richard Carson, an expert on airports, points out, 鈥渓arge metropolitan areas are typically best served by multiple airports.鈥� There鈥檚 little overlap, moreover, between the destinations; Tijuana serves more than two dozen Mexican destinations, for example, while San Diego鈥檚 airport has flights to only two. Tijuana also boasts a direct flight to Shanghai; San Diego has no routes to China. Brown also notes that some people fly into Tijuana, use the CBX, and then hop on a shuttle bus to make the trip up to San Diego鈥檚 airport for their onward journey. That trip would have been essentially undoable when one had to rely on the arduous and unpredictable San Ysidro crossing from Tijuana into San Diego.

The economist Carson, who back in 2006 argued loudly that the Miramar airfield proposal was unnecessary, is bullish on the CBX, which he says 鈥渨orks smoothly,鈥� noting how it鈥檚 opened up destinations in M茅xico that were once accessible only by driving up to Los Angeles, then flying out of LAX. Ron Roberts, the former city councilman who more than a quarter century ago proposed the 鈥淭win Ports鈥� solution, is also a fan. He鈥檚 used the facility as a passenger and says the CBX is 鈥渨orking super.鈥�

Carson points to other knock-on benefits for the region, including increased tourism in San Diego from residents of M茅xico and other Latin American countries, who now find it 鈥渃onsiderably easier鈥� to get there.

The key, says Brown, is that flights from other Mexican cities into Tijuana are domestic flights鈥攖hey tend to be much cheaper than international routes from M茅xico that terminate in cities like San Diego or Los Angeles. (By some estimates, flights out of Tijuana tend to be about a third cheaper than those out of San Diego.) The CBX therefore makes places like Orange County鈥檚 Disneyland a lot more accessible鈥攁nd affordable鈥攆or price-sensitive Mexican travelers.

Traffic jams, to be sure, are a fact of life in Southern California.But the mass congestion at San Diego鈥檚 border crossings has long been a serious hindrance for a region that relies on easy and predictable international crossings of goods and people.

It was back in 2006, Denise Ducheny recalls, when SANDAG released its landmark Border Wait Times Study. Ducheny, now a senior policy adviser at UC San Diego鈥檚 Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, was then a Democratic state senator representing a district of San Diego. The results of SANDAG鈥檚 study were sobering: Wait times at the border鈥攁t Otay Mesa, which is equipped to handle trucks, and San Ysidro, which isn鈥檛鈥攚ere costing the regional economy a cool $7.2 billion a year, and more than 60,000 jobs.

Ducheny knew something had to be done鈥攖hat the region needed faster, easier, more efficient crossings. But at the same time, she was well aware that was easier said than done. The federal government, traditionally in charge of international border crossings, would never spend enough to drastically improve the situation, she recalls thinking鈥攁nd this was even before the 2009 recession that hammered tax receipts and the federal government鈥檚 balance sheet. And though the feds did eventually appropriate $741 million to expand the crossing at San Ysidro, it was clear to Ducheny and others that a more drastic solution was necessary. In other words, San Diego-Tijuana needed a new border crossing, one that could handle both commercial and personal traffic. The new crossing would go in to the east of the two existing ports of entry, at a site dubbed Otay Mesa East.

The problem, as always, was money. But there was a possible solution: tolls.

Ducheny was initially resistant to the idea. 鈥淚 had always hated the notion of paying to cross the border,鈥� she says. It鈥檚 a California thing: 鈥淲e鈥檙e used to freeways being freeways.鈥�

Eventually, however, realizing that tolling was the best option, Ducheny came around. In 2008, she sponsored legislation in the California State Senate that granted SANDAG the authority to issue construction bonds, build a new road to the border and seek private funds for a public-private partnership. The bill passed easily.

The access road to the crossing will be tolled; that鈥檚 how the bonds will be repaid. Otay Mesa East will be the first paid crossing between California and Mexico. (Some of the Texas-M茅xico crossings levy tolls.)

The project is locally driven鈥攖hat鈥檚 key. 鈥淲e鈥檙e actually planning [the crossing] as a whole system,鈥� says Ducheny, including the access roads, the facility itself and even the new facilities on the Mexican side. Pointing to the extant Otay Mesa crossing, she says that the local emphasis will pay dividends in a way that federally led projects haven鈥檛. Otay Mesa, which was driven by the feds, is a first-class facility, but it was 鈥渂uilt in the middle of nowhere, with no connecting roads.鈥� Otay Mesa East will be much better planned, she says.

The project has also provided an opportunity for enhanced cross-border cooperation. Given that M茅xico also has to build new roads to the crossing on the southern side, the idea is that the toll revenues on the American side will be shared with the Mexicans. And because the toll is technically only for the access roads, not the crossing itself, the feds don鈥檛 need to get involved. 鈥淚f we pull this off, this is a new model,鈥� Ducheny says.

Already, more than half of the tolled access road on the San Diego side has been built. The project鈥檚 backers hope the crossing will be operational before the decade is out. They鈥檙e just awaiting final approval from the Mexican and U.S. governments for the planned facility at the border itself.

Ron Roberts鈥攖he former city councilman who long ago proposed building Twin Ports鈥攊s now the chair of SANDAG. He says that, if all goes according to plan, 鈥渃rossing at Otay Mesa East will take one-tenth of the time that it does at San Ysidro.鈥� In order to make sure the new crossing doesn鈥檛 simply become another traffic-clogged San Ysidro or Otay Mesa, the cost of the tolls will rise and fall based on demand. The variable tolling scheme 鈥渨ill keep traffic reasonable,鈥� Roberts insists. A SANDAG study estimates that median toll rates will be $2.35 for private cars and $15.45 for commercial vehicles. The Smart Border Coalition is also pushing to make it easier for Customs and Border Patrol to hire and train agents; the group argues that the current standards lead to understaffed facilities, which only compound the volume-related delays.

If the traffic reduction plan works, it will be a boon to the region: 鈥淚magine if a truck can make three round trips a day instead of two,鈥� Ducheny says, 鈥渢hat鈥檚 a huge productivity increase.鈥�

Like Orange County directly to its north, San Diego has traditionally been friendlier to the Republican Party than many other parts of coastal California. Pete Wilson, who went on to a fiercely conservative governorship of California, was mayor here. The GOP鈥檚 relative strength in San Diego continues to this day, with current mayor Kevin Faulconer just about the only prominent elected Republican left in the state. (For this reason, it鈥檚 widely expected that he鈥檒l run for governor in 2018.)

But a funny thing happened in 2016: Donald Trump got slaughtered in San Diego County, losing 56 to 31 percent. Compare that with 2012, when Mitt Romney managed to secure 46.4 percent to Obama鈥檚 51.5 percent.

Trump鈥檚 perceived hostility to M茅xico was a big reason why. It wasn鈥檛 his call for a wall along the border that turned people off鈥攊ndeed, San Diegans have no problem with the border fence that separates them from Tijuana and recognize the need for border security. Rather, it was Trump鈥檚 call for a tax on imports from M茅xico and his general perceived disdain for the country to the south that alarmed people.

Already, Trump鈥檚 presidency is affecting the area in unpredictable ways. Las Americas Premium Outlets is a major outlet mall in San Ysidro, just a little way from the border crossing. So close to M茅xico is the outdoor mall that its back parking lot abuts the border fence. While the real estate company that owns Las Americas wouldn鈥檛 disclose sales figures, a spokesman acknowledged that 鈥渁 great many鈥� of its shoppers are from Mexico.

Yet on a recent weekday the mall was seemingly deserted. The fall of the Mexican peso鈥攁 direct result of Trump鈥檚 election, economists agree鈥攈as sharply curtailed Mexican shopping in San Diego, says James Clark of the Smart Border Coalition. This was illustrated to even greater affect on Sunday, February 5, when Mexican shoppers organized a spontaneous, social media-fueled boycott of American stores. On that day, San Ysidro merchants reported their sales figures were 50 to 80 percent off from a typical Sunday. Border crossings into San Ysidro were reported to take only 20 minutes; they鈥檇 take up to three hours on a normal weekend.

Local leaders hope they might be able to educate the new president. Mayor Faulconer鈥攚ho, despite his partisan affiliation, pointedly declined to endorse Trump in the general election鈥攕uggests that the Trump presidency is an 鈥渙pportunity鈥� because the San Diego-Tijuana relationship is a 鈥済ood story to tell.鈥� At the Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Jerry Sanders, the current Chamber president and himself a former Republican mayor of San Diego, said, while addressing the binational business community, 鈥渋t鈥檚 so important that we continue working together, with a strong unified voice, to reach those outside of this room and beyond our region.鈥� Everybody knew to whom he was referring.

And in the meantime, other projects are charging full speed ahead. Early last year, American authorities began inspecting trucks on the Mexican side of the border at Otay Mesa. The goal of this unprecedented project is to avoid double inspections鈥攁nd to expedite the process of getting goods into the U.S.

Also, renovation is underway on a 100-year-old rail line linking San Diego with Tijuana and neighboring Tecateneighboring Tecate (a city some 30 miles east) then recrossing the border, connecting with the Union Pacific line. Jorge Izquierdo, a spokesman for BC Rail in Tijuana, is sanguine. He figures that even with a border tax, the price will just be passed on to consumers, so goods will continue to flow. And Ducheny makes an interesting point as well: Washington鈥檚 souring relations with M茅xico City have actually strengthened California-M茅xico ties. 鈥淭he Cali-Mex relationship is now stronger than ever,鈥� she says, 鈥渆specially as the U.S.-M茅xico relationship weakens.鈥�

Ultimately, no matter what happens in Washington鈥攐r in M茅xico City, for that matter, where an anti-American leftist is tipped to be elected president in 2018鈥擲an Diego has no choice but to work with Tijuana.

鈥淲e breathe the same air, we use the same watershed,鈥� points out Mayor Faulconer. In many ways, he says, 鈥渢he story of San Diego is the story of its relationship to Mexico.鈥�

Source: Polotico Magazine

By: Mark Peterson