Advancing Program Symmetry for US-Canada Investment in Cross-Border Transportation

Reviewing the 17 years since the enactment of NAFTA, the U.S. and Canada have undertaken many initiatives to improve cross-border connections. While the range of issues that receive dedicated treatment is broad, this article focuses on crossborder transportation. Since NAFTA, both countries have set up multi-year federal investment programs for cross-border transportation – the U.S. Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program (CBI) in 1998 and the Canadian Border Infrastructure Fund (BIF) in 2002. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and Transport Canada (TC) signed a memorandum of cooperation (MOC) on transportation issues which led to the creation of the U.S.-Canada Transportation Border Working Group (TBWG)