page_title: History of the Cross Border Xpress
section_title: 1991: TwinPorts proposal
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Cross Border Xpress / 1991: TwinPorts proposal
caption_attribution_description: English: A joint U.S.-Mexico airport between Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, California
context_page_description: The 2015 opening of the Cross Border Xpress terminal and bridge to the Tijuana Airport also referred to as the Tijuana Cross-border Terminal and the Puerta de las Californias, was preceded by a quarter century of negotiations that were impacted by political, economic and security issues.
  Following Mexico's Debt Crisis and foreign loan renegotiations in the 1980s, in 1989, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari began to implement a massive privatization program to facilitate both the general and regional development of Mexico. Key to that program was the modernization of all transportation networks. Lacking funds and acknowledging the symbiotic relationship between commerce and transportation, "co-investments" were initiated to attract both domestic and foreign capital.
context_section_description: The term "TwinPorts" was used to describe the concept and replace the SANDAG descriptor "binational airport". Rodolfo Ramos personally delivered the TwinPorts artist's rendering (image 4) to President Salinas and scheduled a meeting in Mexico City for a San Diego delegation. On May 1, 1991, San Diego City Councilman Ron Roberts officially announced an alternative to SANDAG's binational airport proposal that came to be known as TwinPorts. On May 29, 1991, President Salinas de Gortari met with a San Diego delegation headed by Mayor Maureen O'Conner in Mexico City and an agreement was reached to create a joint Mexico/San Diego airport study work group.  On June 2, 1991, Rodolfo Ramos arrived in San Diego to meet with City officials to help prepare for the joint Mexico-San Diego study group. En route, he was seriously injured in a car accident and the meetings were cancelled.
  As shown by image 5, the TwinPorts concept would have retained the Tijuana airport's existing configuration but did not include a cross-border passenger terminal. Instead it used a cross-border aircraft taxiway which would have allowed aircraft to cross the U.S.–Mexico border to share runways between the two airports and service their respective passenger and cargo terminals, which was similar both in function and operation to SANDAG's binational proposal. The combined Tijuana/San Diego footprint would have created a 4,000 acre (1,600 hectares) airport with a minimum runway separation of 4,300 feet (1.3 kilometers) to allow for simultaneous aircraft operations between the two airports. It would have replaced the existing 480 acre (194 hectares) San Diego International Airport (Lindbergh Field).
  As with the San Diego airport, the Tijuana International Airport at 1,100 acres (448 hectares) lacked the space to build parallel runways with a 4,300-foot (1.3 kilometer) separation to allow for simultaneous aircraft operations. As a 1,200 foot runway separation requires a 3-minute delay between departures to protect lighter aircraft  from wake turbulence created by heavy jets such as the Boeing 747 and 767, Airbus A300, DC-10, MD-11 and L1011, a runway separation of 2,500 feet (760 meters) is recommended to allow for simultaneous VFR operations (Visual Flight Rules) of all type aircraft.  The Tijuana airport's access roads and terminal configuration also lacked the capacity to move a high volume of departure, arrival and interconnecting passengers to support the next generation of super-jumbo jets being designed at the time (the Boeing 747-400 stretch version and the Airbus A380). The Tijuana airport was further limited by a single 09 ILS (instrument landing system) runway approach which is directly over the Naval Outlying Landing Field Imperial Beach, a U.S. Naval helicopter training base. Air operations are also impacted by general aviation air traffic from San Diego's Brown Field Municipal Airport on Otay Mesa, which limits the Tijuana airport's 09 runway and ILS capacity as air traffic must be coordinated and shared between three air fields with conflicting missions and aircraft sizes: the U.S. Navy (helicopter training operations), Brown Field (general aviation), and Tijuana (commercial flights).
caption: Image 4: San Diego TwinPorts rendering along U.S-Mexico border, 1991
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