San Luis Port of Entry opens more lanes, easing border traffic
More lanes at San Luis Port are already easing border bottlenecks for shoppers, commuters and freight, with 8 more lanes still to come.
The extra lanes at the San Luis Port of Entry are already changing the daily rhythm for shoppers, cross-border workers and small businesses that depend on steady traffic between San Luis, Arizona, and San Luis, Sonora. The port opened eight lanes last month, including two sentry lanes and six lanes for all traffic, a step city leaders say should help local merchants by moving more people through the crossing with less delay.
That matters in a city where the port is one of the main economic arteries. The General Services Administration says the San Luis I Land Port of Entry serves about 3 million drivers and 2.5 million pedestrians each year, making it the second-busiest non-commercial port in Arizona. The agency says the modernization project is designed to improve traffic flow, reduce wait times, increase U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing capacity and strengthen operational security. When the remaining eight lanes open, northbound privately owned vehicle lanes will have doubled from eight to 16.
The project is a roughly $355 million investment, and construction is scheduled to continue through spring 2029. Hensel Phelps received the design-build contract in October 2022, and groundbreaking followed in June 2023. The port has remained open throughout construction, which has meant gradual changes rather than a full shutdown, but the traffic pattern around it has shifted as work has advanced.
Those changes are showing up on nearby streets. The City of San Luis said the new traffic signal at William Brooks Avenue and Urtuzuastegui Street became fully operational April 14, 2026. In a separate notice, the city said southbound vehicular and pedestrian lanes along Main Street and Urtuzuastegui Street were scheduled to change beginning March 24, 2026. Those adjustments are part of the larger reconfiguration around the port, where each lane opening can shave time off a commute or help a truck carrying produce move more efficiently.
Mayor Nieves Riedel has described the lane expansion as historical and said it would help economic development across the region. For San Luis, the payoff is not abstract. Better access at the port affects where people shop, how fast workers get to their jobs and how easily goods move through a binational economy that ties Yuma County to the border every day.
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