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Table of Contents

Measuring Border Delay and Crossing Times at the U.S.–Mexico Border—Part II
Guidebook for Analysis and Dissemination of Border Crossing Time and Wait Time Data

Final Report

INTRODUCTION

Background

In 2001, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) conducted research that resulted in a report entitled Evaluation of Travel Time Methods to Support Mobility Performance Monitoring.  That project involved manual crossing time measurements on commercial vehicles transiting four northern and three southern border crossings.  The research also produced another report—Assessment of Automated Data Collection Technologies for Calculation of Commercial Motor Vehicle Border Crossing Travel Time Delay—which was published in 2002 and evaluated candidates to automate the collection of border delay and crossing time data.  There were 22 vehicle-sensing technologies screened against factors such as availability of appropriate software, volume count flexibility, minimization of privacy invasiveness, ruggedness/all-weather operation, low infrastructure cost, and positive identification capability.

Of the 21 technologies initially screened, 11 were chosen for closer examination.  These 11 technologies had a multitude of desirable attributes overall but in particular had the potential to meet the following three essential criteria:

  • Make positive identification of both inbound and outbound trucks at a matched pair of two points (upstream and downstream) that correspond to where data collectors are stationed for manual readings.
  • Time-stamp each vehicle that is positively identified at its detected location to enable travel time calculations.
  • Operate in all weather conditions found at a border crossing. 

Subsequently, 11 of the 22 screened candidate-sensing technologies that met those three basic criteria were assessed against the additional criteria of accuracy of geo-location/travel time, percent of vehicles recorded, requirement for cross-border installation, maturity of technology for application, cost of infrastructure, and ability to count every vehicle crossing.  The major deliverable of that research was a documented trade-off comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the most promising sensor technologies that could potentially be used in an automated system to calculate truck travel times at border crossing sites.  The report also noted that “a modest follow-on study to determine the most appropriate sensor technologies for the FHWA’s needs could produce benefits.”

As a follow up to the work described above, in 2006, the FHWA initiated a research effort entitled Measuring Border Delay and Crossing Times at the U.S.–Mexico Border.  This research, namely the identification of suitable technologies, was a foundational component for the subsequent development of a systematic approach to automate the measurement of border crossing time, a term defined in the Setting Basic Definitions of Border Crossing and Wait Times section.

In 2007, FHWA’s research on measuring border delay and crossing times at theU.S.–Mexico borderexpanded to involve two specific objectives: (1) selecting a final technology for the border crossing time measurement system at two ports of entry (POEs) on the U.S.–Mexico border, and (2) implementing a border crossing time measurement system.  To meet research objectives, FHWA initiated two projects, one of which became the deployment of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology at the Bridge of the Americas (BOTA), a land border crossing between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.  This project initially implemented two RFID reader stations at BOTA to measure crossing times of northbound commercial vehicles.  The system at BOTA became operational in July 2009.

In February 2008, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) started a similar project to measure crossing times.  The project implemented RFID technology at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge to measure crossing times of northbound commercial vehicles.  The system includes four RFID reader stations—two in Mexico and two on the U.S. side of the border.  The deployment of RFID reader stations and other communication equipment was completed and the system became operational in October 2009.

RFID reader stations were subsequently installed at the U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) Primary Inspection booths at the Pharr and BOTA POEs in March and April 2011, respectively.  This provided the RFID systems at those POEs with the additional capability to measure wait time, a term defined in the Setting Basic Definitions of Border Crossing and Wait Times section.

The key reason RFID technology was selected at both the BOTA and Pharr POEs to measure crossing times (and later, wait times) was due to the relatively high percentage of commercial vehicles crossing at those locations that already had RFID transponders, or tags.  For example, passive RFID tags were widely used by trucks enrolled in CBP’s Free and Secure Trade (FAST) Program, and many trucks also had CBP user fee or toll tags.  Also, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) installed RFID reader stations to provide identifying information that could be used to retrieve information needed to facilitate passage of commercial vehicles through the DPS’s Border Safety Inspection Facilities (BSIFs).  It was emphasized to system users and other stakeholders that the intended RFID system implementation needed to be designed to read tag identification numbers (IDs) and time-stamp the IDs when the tags passed particular RFID reader stations.  The design did not need to provide capability for the system to identify a driver, vehicle, or carrier, which was not information of interest.  Further, the RFID system did not need to be integrated with any other system that provided access to that type of information.  Key deliverables of FHWA’s research on measuring border delay and crossing times at the U.S.–Mexico border include supporting documents that describe to local, regional, and State agencies how to deploy similar RFID-based border crossing time and wait time measurement systems on the U.S.–Mexico border.  These documents include:

  • Step-by-Step Guidelines for Implementing RFID to Measure Border Crossing and Wait Times.
  • Guidebook for Analysis and Dissemination of Border Crossing and Wait Time Data.

This document is the second listed above and includes traveler information (e.g., current crossing and wait times) and archived information (e.g., performance measures, pre-coded reports and charts).  This guidebook is not specific to one POE and hence is applicable to any border crossing deriving crossing time and wait time data similar to data collected by RFID-based systems at various U.S.–Mexico land border crossings in Texas.  In addition to the supporting documents, a prototype Web tool has been developed.  The Web tool is (a) a centralized repository of border wait times and crossing time data from multiple POEs, and (b) an efficient platform to archive, process, and disseminate traveler information (current wait times and crossing times of commercial vehicles) as well as archived data related to performance of POEs.

Purpose and Audience for the Guidebook

The purpose of this document is to describe to local, regional, and State agencies how to analyze and disseminate data collected by a system to measure travel times of commercial vehicles, which is referred to in this document as the RFID-based border crossing time and wait time measurement system.  This term presumes that RFID reader stations have been implemented in the configuration necessary to yield both crossing and wait time measurements.

The guidebook includes a recommended statistical analysis that can be used to support monitoring the performance of border crossings and disseminating traveler information.  The guidebook also describes available mechanisms to disseminate crossing time and wait time data as traveler information and archived data in the form of performance measures.

This description assists agencies with RFID-based border crossing time and wait time measurement systems to develop meaningful output from the data analysis, which then can be used by stakeholders for planning and decision-making as well as disseminating information to support a variety of stakeholder needs.

The audience for this guidebook includes State departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and agencies, cities, councils of governments, or any other entity that typically is responsible for planning, designing, implementing, operating, and maintaining an RFID-based border crossing time and wait time measurement system.  The guidebook can also help freight carriers, shippers, factory owners, and agencies involved with cross-border freight movement better understand the types of information that might be available to them with an RFID-based border crossing time and wait time measurement system.

For the purpose of this document, an agency (public or private) planning and procuring a project to deploy an RFID system is referred as an implementing agency, which may seek the services of consultants and contractors to design and deploy the system.  The scope of the RFID-based border crossing time and wait time measurement system described in this document is commercial freight vehicles inbound to the United States.  In this document, the terms commercial vehicle and truck are used interchangeably, as are the terms transponder and tag.

Organization of the Guidebook

The Creating a Framework section of the guidebook describes how an implementing agency needs to go about creating a framework to analyze crossing time and wait time data and disseminate the information (real-time and archived) to stakeholders.  The section describes stakeholder involvement in gathering needs and developing data analysis outputs related to traveler information and performance measures, as well as identifying preferred dissemination media.

The Data Analysis section describes processes for filtering the raw data obtained from the RFID-based border crossing time and wait time measurement system.  It also describes the process for aggregating data in temporal granularities (e.g., hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly).  Finally, it describes numerical methods to compute recommended performance measures in the context of mobility at the border.

The Information Dissemination describes key concepts and techniques for disseminating both traveler information and archived data.  The chapter also describes ways to identify proper dissemination media and the need for establishing policies and procedures for data dissemination.

The Conclusions section provides summary of the guidebook.

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