CBP Border Wait Times

The CBP Border Wait Times app is an excellent tool for travelers and frequent business people. It provides real-time information about how busy a port of entry is, allowing you to plan ahead and decide the best time to cross the border, catch a flight, or organize your schedule to minimize delays. The app also helps you choose between using a Ready Lane or a regular lane and even consider alternative ports of entry nearby if wait times are shorter. Overall, it’s a very informative and easy-to-use app that helps make re-entering the United States faster and more efficient.

This app is meets just about every negative stereotype of poor government handling. Have been in Baja 4 months and made multiple trips back to San Diego via San Ysidro and this app has never ever been even close to accurate wait times for drivers. The expats of Baja don’t even bother keeping it on their phones because it’s that unreliable, according to their Facebook group. I’m sure they start counting the wait time at some arbitrary point, but who knows where that is. All I know is when it says 90 minutes it actually means somewhere around 4 hours. Trusting this app was a grave error, I didn’t think it could possibly be THAT wrong. But oh it was, and it was the closest I have come to peeing my pants since I was a toddler. The pedestrian crossing seemed accurate. I added one star for that and the decent user interface. It could benefit enormously from a map view guiding you to the correct lane and explanations as to which lane to use (shortcuts/links to Ready Lane requirements, Sentri, RTC)

BWT -APP- has current wait times and historic usage wait graphs (still showing non-covid wait times). BWT -WEB- has current wait times, near term historic wait times (showed covid times), summary of crossing waits near each other (eg Niagara), some real-time camera views, and a bit more location info. Both are geared toward frequent crossers. If you are an infrequent crosser, both are really lacking in location info. Except in a few cases, you cant even tell what state the crossing is in or its location. Look up the name beforehand - warning: it may have multiple names, but BWT only uses one. Even a general map would be useful, the ability to list by state, or just the state listed near the name. Being able to quickly choose alternatives crossings would help. Even without that, the data is accurate and not hard, but not quick if the crossings are new to you. Just a bit too much unnecessary goofing around when tiny changes would help.