San Diego - Tijuana Border and Flight Comparison

A proposed solution to San Diego's crowded airport is to build a pedestrian bridge to Mexico. Tijuana's General Abelardo L. Rodriguez International Airport (TIJ) is located just across the US-Mexico border, and the proposed bridge, about 20 miles away from downtown San Diego, would allow people to cross the border into the airport. Otay-Tijuana Venture, the project's developer, cites that of the "roughly 4 million people who fly into and out of TIJ each year, more than half cross the border one way or the other." However, crossing the San Diego - Tijuana borders on automobile involves notoriously long waiting times. Some prefer to cross by foot and then catch transportation on the other side. San Ysidro crossing between the two cities is the world's busiest port of entry.

How much cheaper is it to fly out of Tijuana instead of the San Diego area airports? The following are the costs of the cheapest flights, for one adult roundtrip, from Expedia retrieved tonight, departing on Monday, December 7th and returning Wednesday, December 9th:

Destination	San Diego	Tijuana
New York	$351.10	$972.59
London	$2,214.60	$2,282.60
Tokyo	$1,050.50	$3,932.80
Sydney	$1,577.80	$3,082.21
Cairo	$1,316.68	$3,930.00
Rio de Janeiro	$1,269.49	$1,540.55
Panama City	$800.40	$938.19
Mexico City	$342.59	$291.16
Cancun	$400.40	$371.04

For many of these cities, San Diego offers an enormous discount. Even for other Latin American destinations, San Diego offers cost advantage. It is only within Mexico that Tijuana offers cost advantages. The Tijuana flights to rest of Mexico are also more frequent and have fewer stops on average. Looking at just these results then, it would seem as though the pedestrian bridge serves to relieve those in Southern California traveling to various parts of Mexico by air. A positive externality would be slight relieving of the border crossing for those going to the airport.

Sources:

• http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303559504579196370226844190
• http://www.expedia.com/Flights
• http://www.tijuana.com/info.html