The City has renewed its partnership with the CBP to keep the bridge lines short. From KVIA:
The City of El Paso has renewed its partnership with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), providing more than $400,000 towards the reimbursement of additional customs staffing.
The goal is to reduce the time it takes to cross into the United States at city-managed ports of entry. The Bridge of Americas is currently ineligible to receive this funding because it is owned and operated by the federal government.
The program, launched in 2014, has allowed the City to pay for additional CBP service through collecting revenue from tolls, and has since reimbursed CBP nearly $3.1 million for more than 29,000 service hours.
That’s $103.45 an hour. Are those lane jockeys making $200,000 a year?
Obviously not. But I did have a conversation one night with a couple of agents manning the pedestrian crossing, in which they both confessed to making in excess of $100k, with seniority, and overtime. And obviously there’s going to be a lot of paper shuffling involved, albeit digitally.
But I guess spending tax dollars to speed my way back over the bridge is worth it.
Thanks, El Paso.
Except bridge wait times are not really as fast as they once were, and that is due mostly to the paranoid changes that have followed in the wake of the Patriot Act, and 9/11 (imho). Worse, I still get treated like I was some sort of criminal when I cross back into El Paso.
Me too. I’ve been crossing every week for about 40 years.