Toward Understanding the Pedestrian Travel on the Paso Del Norte Bridge: Phase I - Development of a Conceptual Data Inventory Framework

The Paso Del Norte (PDN) Bridge is without doubt one of the busiest cross border footpaths along the United States-Mexico border and is expected to continue dominating the total pedestrian crossings in El Paso over the next decades. The bridge provides a conveniently central connection between the United States and Mexico, which supports the economic development of both El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. On the other hand, long queues and protracted wait times have become a substantial issue for cross-border travelers. In recent years, pedestrian crossings on the PDN bridge have demonstrated significant declines. Though it is likely that a primary cause for this might be the inordinate amount of time waiting to cross the border, the causes may also include many other factors, such as security issues, peso devaluations, and migration in response to violence. The broad objective of this project is thus to contribute toward understanding the cross-border travel behavior decisions, exploring the factors influencing their travel, and the issues they have been facing as well as providing insights to mitigate these issues, with a focus on pedestrians crossing PDN bridge. To achieve project objectives, the research team structured the work to be conducted in two phases. This report constitutes the current first phase of the study, which provides a first step toward examining the pedestrian travelers' choices crossing the border by developing a conceptual framework to create a data inventory required for an analysis. Specifically, the report includes a synthesis of the existing literature, definition of the study area, and identification of proposed primary data source (based on a local travel survey) and secondary data sources (primarily based on spatial variables). The results of the first phase of this study will be used in the second phase as the basis for a focused analysis and input to a robust model to understand the factors affecting the travel choice decisions of PDN pedestrians.