The City of San Diego received a $6 million TIGER grant for the Otay Mesa Truck Route Phase IV. This project will allow the City to improve the additional border fence road by adding an emergency lane.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) grants funding through the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program.

The Otay Mesa Truck Route Phase IV is an integral part of the southbound truck route and includes extending the road along the border fence, which has no name-from La Media Road to Britannia, to transfer trucks that are waiting to cross the commercial port of entry.

“This project will be carried out in a parallel street were the commercial trucks queue to cross the border to Mexico through the commercial port of entry,” said Otay Mesa Chamber of Commerce executive director Alejandra Mier y Teran to La Prensa San Diego. “This project is divided in two phases, the first one is to create an additional border fence road because a long time ago the trucks took one lane that the Border Patrol had, and we promised to give it back. Phase 2 of the project we are not sure if it’s going to move on but it’s about the expansion of the nameless street up to Britannia.”

The objective is to prevent trucks from lining up on Otay Mesa Road streets and blocking businesses and to have them queuing in this proposed border fence road.

Mayor of San Diego Faulconer and San Diego Councilman David Alvarez developed a Southbound Truck Route Task force to address both the expansion of La Media Road and this project. The Otay Mesa Chamber of Commerce advocated for the project.

“We’ve worked for many years in this project and we are really happy that we can finally see the results of our work. We got the money for the project, we now only need to supervise it,” said Mier y Teran. “The most difficult thing about this project was to create it in the beginning and to be accepted because of its importance. We advocated for the Otay Truck Route project because there was a need in the community.”

The West section of the Otay Truck Route, Phase IV is scheduled to begin construction Summer 2018. This is one of the many projects going on right now in the Otay Mesa area. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) recently announced they received the funding to begin a $122 million upgrade to the Otay Mesa Port of Entry that would include the expansion of the port’s pedestrian and truck processing capacities.

“This expansion project, that is already funded, entails doubling processing capability for pedestrians and additional truck lanes for the Otay Mesa Import facility,” said Mier y Teran. “We are still a few years away for this project to be completed, but the funds for the project are already secured.”