Tijuana is the largest city in the state of Baja California located on the northwestern Pacific Coast of Mexico. Tijuana is the municipal seat of the Tijuana Municipality and the hub of the Tijuana metropolitan area. It has a close proximity to the Mexico–United States border, which is part of the San Diego-Tijuana metro area.
San Ysidro is a district of the City of San Diego, immediately north of the Mexico–United States border. It neighbors Otay Mesa West to the north, Otay Mesa to the east, and Nestor and the Tijuana River Valley to the west; together these communities form South San Diego, a practical exclave of the City of San Diego. Major thoroughfares include Beyer Boulevard and San Ysidro Boulevard.
The San Diego Trolley is a light rail system operating in the metropolitan area of San Diego. The Trolley's operator, San Diego Trolley, Inc., is a subsidiary of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS). The trolley operates as a critical component of the MTS, with connections to and integrated travel tickets with the local bus systems.
The San Diego and Arizona Railway was a 148-mile (238 km) short line U.S. railroad founded by entrepreneur John D. Spreckels, and dubbed "The Impossible Railroad" by engineers of its day due to the immense logistical challenges involved. It linked San Diego, its western terminus, with El Centro, its eastern terminus, where passengers could connect with Southern Pacific's transcontinental lines, eliminating the need to first travel north via Los Angeles or Riverside.
The San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railway Company is a short-line American railroad founded in 1906 as the San Diego and Arizona Railway (SD&A) by sugar magnate, developer, and entrepreneur John D. Spreckels. Dubbed "The Impossible Railroad" by many engineers of its day due to the immense logistical challenges involved, the line was established in part to provide San Diego with a direct rail link to the east by connecting with the Southern Pacific Railroad lines in El Centro, California.
The San Diego and Imperial Valley Railroad (SD&IV) is a class III railroad operating freight rail service in the San Diego area, providing service to customers in the region and moving railcars between the end of the BNSF Railway in Downtown San Diego and the Mexico–United States border in San Ysidro. The railroad has exclusive trackage rights to operate over tracks of the San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railway, a subsidiary of the Metropolitan Transit System, the regional public transit service provider. Tracks are shared with the San Diego Trolley, another subsidiary of the Metropolitan Transit System, and freight trains are only operated at night when passenger service is not in operation. The San Diego & Imperial Valley Railroad was established in October 1984 and is owned and operated by Genesee & Wyoming, a holding company that operates more than 100 shortline railroads like the SD&IV.
Carrizo Gorge Railway, Inc. was a railroad operator on the San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railway (SD&AE) from Tijuana, Mexico, to Plaster City, California.
Tecate is a city in Tecate Municipality, Baja California. It is across the Mexico–US border from Tecate, California. As of 2019, the city had a population of 108,860 inhabitants, while the metropolitan area has a population of 132,406 inhabitants. Tecate is part of the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan area and the largest city between Tijuana and Mexicali. Tecate is a regional economic hub and popular tourist destination, known as home to the Tecate Port of Entry and to Tecate Beer.
The South Bay, also known as South County, is a region in southwestern San Diego County, California consisting of the cities and unincorporated communities of Bonita, Chula Vista, East Otay Mesa, Imperial Beach, Lincoln Acres, National City, and South San Diego.
Mexico has a freight railway system owned by the national government and operated by various entities under concessions (charters) granted by the national government. The railway system provides freight and passenger service throughout the country, connecting major industrial centers with ports and with rail connections at the United States border. Passenger rail services were limited to a number of tourist trains between 1997, when Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México suspended service, and 2008, when Ferrocarril Suburbano de la Zona Metropolitana de México inaugurated Mexico's first commuter rail service between Mexico City and the State of Mexico. This is not including the Mexico City Metro, which started service in 1969.
The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System is a public transit service provider for central, southern, northeast, and southeast San Diego County, California, as well as for the city of San Diego. The agency directly operates a large transit system that includes the MTS Bus, San Diego Trolley light rail, and Rapid bus rapid transit services. The MTS also controls the San Diego and Arizona Eastern (SD&AE) freight railway and regulates taxicabs, jitneys, and other private for-hire passenger transportation services.
San Diego–Tijuana is an international transborder agglomeration, straddling the border of the adjacent North American coastal cities of San Diego, California, United States, and Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. The 2020 population of the region was 5,456,577, making it the largest bi-national conurbation shared between the United States and Mexico, and the second-largest shared between the US and another country. The conurbation consists of the San Diego metropolitan area, in the United States and the municipalities of Tijuana, Rosarito Beach (126,980), and Tecate (108,440) in Mexico. It is the third most populous region in the California–Baja California region, smaller only than the metropolitan areas of Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Blue Line is a 26.3-mile (42.3 km) light rail line in the San Diego Trolley system, operated by San Diego Trolley, Inc., an operating division of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS). With an end-to-end travel time of one hour and twenty-three minutes, it operates between the UTC Transit Center and the San Ysidro Transit Center, the latter of which is at the border with Mexico directly adjacent to the San Ysidro Port of Entry, facilitating easy connections across the border. The line serves La Jolla, Downtown San Diego, National City, Chula Vista, and San Ysidro.
The San Ysidro Mountains are a mountain range in southern San Diego County, California and Baja California, Mexico. The mountains are a rugged coastal foothill range of the Peninsular Ranges system. Major peaks include the highest summit of the range, Otay Mountain, and the Cerro San Isidro which forms the southern extrusion of the range on the Mexican side of the border. The majority of the range is within the Otay Mountain Wilderness Area, in the United States.
The Tijuana metropolitan area, and in Spanish the Zona Metropolitana de Tijuana, is located by the Pacific Ocean in Mexico. The 2010 census placed the Tijuana metropolitan area as the fifth largest city by population in the country with 1,751,302 people. The census bureau defined metropolitan area comprises three municipalities: Tijuana, Tecate and Rosarito Beach. Yet sources commonly include Tecate Municipality in the metropolitan area as the urban area between Tijuana and Tecate grows, the commuting populace increases - ultimately further developing the southern areas of San Diego–Tijuana, and the three municipalities maintain strong relationships and cooperation.
The Tecate Port of Entry is one three ports of entry in the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan region. The land port is located between Tecate, California in San Diego County's Mountain Empire and Tecate Municipality in Baja California. It connects California State Route 188 with Paseo Lázaro Cárdenas, a spur of Mexico Federal Highway 2, as well as Federal Highway 3 to the south. It is a minor port in comparison to the larger San Ysidro Port of Entry and Otay Mesa Port of Entry. This is attributed in part to the fact that reaching the crossing on the US side requires driving on narrow, winding mountain roads.
La Rumorosa is a town in the municipality of Tecate, Baja California, Mexico. It has a population of 1,836 inhabitants. It lies on the road between Mexicali and Tecate, and it is directly across the international border from Jacumba Hot Springs, California. However, no official border crossing exists; the nearest official crossing is in Tecate. The La Rumorosa area contains Native American cave paintings, which are the primary tourist draw.
The Pacific Imperial Railroad was a company in possession of the SD&AE Desert Line right of way in Southern California, colloquially referred to as the Desert Line. The Desert Line starts at the border crossing at Division, near Campo at Milepost 59.94 in eastern San Diego County, California where it connects with the Baja California Railroad in Mexico, and stretches 70.1 miles through the Jacumba Mountains to El Centro, California, where it connects to Union Pacific Railroad at Milepost 129.61. The significance of the Desert Line is that it provides an alternative rail route to and from the east for servicing the distribution, transportation, and supply chain needs of the Cali-Baja region.
Federal Highway 2D is a part of the federal highways corridors, and is the designation for toll highways paralleling Mexican Federal Highway 2. Seven road segments are designated Highway 2D, all but one in the state of Baja California, providing a toll highway stretching from Tijuana in the west to around Mexicali in the east; one in Sonora, between Santa Ana and Altar; and another between the cities of Matamoros and Reynosa in Tamaulipas.
The Cerro Bola is a coastal metavolcanic mountain formation in northwestern Baja California. The Cerro Bola, along with the nearby mountain Cerro Gordo form the highest elevation areas of Tijuana Municipality. Because of its prominence, the transmitters for television station XHDTV and radio station XHPRS-FM are located on the summit of Cerro Bola, which reaches an elevation of 1,260 m (4,130 ft). It is located approximately 35 km (22 mi) south of the Tecate border crossing, and sits at the southwest end of the Valle de Las Palmas. The mountain range is host to a number of rare and endemic plant species, such as Arctostaphylos bolensis and Ceanothus bolensis.
