Research · Border friction
Cross-Border Commuting
A new crossing can change how people travel without visibly relieving the old corridor. This research follows Cross Border Xpress through border flows, airport demand, and airline schedules.
A crossing is a system change
Differentiated Border Access Without Detectable Corridor Relief: Evidence from Cross Border Xpress studies the December 2015 opening of a paid crossing for ticketed Tijuana Airport passengers.
The analysis connects legacy-port movements, airport traffic, airline schedules, and delay records. Its frozen replication package preserves the original empirical decisions and separates causal estimates from descriptive and accounting results.
What changed in the first six months
Legacy San Diego entries were 0.71% above their synthetic comparison in January–June 2016. Pedestrian entries fell relative to their comparison, but the combined corridor result does not establish net relief or bound gross diversion.
Tijuana Airport traffic was 7.7% above its synthetic comparison, ranking fifth among 12 airports. Continuing-route frequency accounted for 79.1% of concurrent domestic scheduled passenger growth. That decomposition describes how growth was carried; it does not identify a causal airline response.
What the comparison can resolve
The opening bundles a connection, inspection service, passenger eligibility, and a price. The study cannot isolate the fee, time saving, induced travel, or welfare.
The corridor design has 15 comparable placebos, limiting the smallest one-sided rank to 0.0625. A non-detection does not establish a small effect. A prospective Singapore–Johor RTS module remains a research design, with no estimated RTS effect.