Ok, I have thought about this many times, but I don't have the skill set to create it.
I was wondering if any of you software gurus have thought about creating a 30 day analysis of border crossing times for California?
I know that it is possible to create a tool that would scrub the border wait time web site every 15 minutes or so in order to find the peaks and
valleys of the best times to cross, statistically?
I would love to know how difficult this would be to do?
Thanksbarneyb - 11-26-2008 at 12:12 AM
It would be fairly simple to gather this information from a website. All that you would have to do is save the website page for a certain increment of
time and then parse out the actual times by searching for the corresponding column header name. After that just save the data that was pulled of the
webpage to a datebase which then could be used to generate reports. Of course there would be some error checking that would have to be done as well to
guarantee the information was accurate.
Actually from what I have seen the wait times being reported by the CBP are not accurate. FYI calculating wait times is not a priority for the CBP at
all. I'm pretty sure that they could care less about how long you are waiting in line so I'm not sure why they even bother putting the false info on
their website. The wait times that are reported on the CBP website are calculated by asking people in line hourly how long they had to wait to get
through. This is completely inaccurate since the number of cars waiting in the left and right lanes can drastically change within an hours time and
also the people that are asked can give inaccurate wait times.
I have noticed that the wait times being reported by El Mexicano seem to be more up to date with actual amount of vehicles currently waiting in line.
Mexicans have a more vested interest in this information so it makes sense to me that a mexican source is more accurate in this instance.tjBill - 11-26-2008 at 10:05 AM
The only accurate information on border wait times I've found is the Spanish radio stations. Like 104.5 in TJ/San Diego.
El Mexicano is the best on the internet.
AND the point would be ?
MrBillM - 11-26-2008 at 10:35 AM
With few exceptions, I cross northbound on the same weekday at roughly the same time in the afternoon and there is NO pattern to the wait any longer
for the last year. Previously, I could depend on hitting the border on a Thursday between 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. and the wait was about 20 minutes. No
longer. It has varied from 5 minutes to 1.5 hours for no apparent reason. Asking the agent gets a shrug and a "no idea" response.barneyb - 11-26-2008 at 11:45 AM
The best time to cross on weekdays seems to be in the late afternoon/early evening time frame from about 5-7pm. Of course the border waits are
predictably unpredictable you never know how long your wait will be until you are on the other side.Pescador - 11-26-2008 at 05:42 PM
Which, in my humble little opinion, makes Tecate the perfect place to cross.Udo - 11-26-2008 at 08:24 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by Pescador
Which, in my humble little opinion, makes Tecate the perfect place to cross.
Quote:
Ey Pescador, we need to careful about disseminating this kind of information...we don't want our little secret to get out, do you"
BajaNomad - 11-26-2008 at 09:42 PM
The answer to the question is that yes, a programmer can developer a "bot" "scraper" to grab the info from an Internet source (how accurate that
source is is another matter) and this info could be disseminated into a chart or graph showing averages for any given time/day/date as well as highs
and lows to show the variance for each as well.
