Crossing between the B.C. and U.S. border has dropped significantly every month for over a year, but that doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent.
For folks who are still choosing to travel to the States, a new dashboard has made things a lot more transparent and a lot more convenient to know what the situation is like at the border, well in advance.
Daily Hive Urbanized spoke to the creator of BorderBug, Ben, who is a Bellingham local. It’s a new dashboard/website that offers many features to make cross-border travel easier.
“The inspiration came from personal experience: my wife and I cross the border from time to time for day trips into B.C., and I was always frustrated by how scattered the available crossing information was,” he told Daily Hive Urbanized.
Some of that scattered information includes wait times, the weather and road conditions.
“It all existed somewhere, but nothing pulled it together in one clean view. BorderBug was my attempt to fix that.”
Wait times in BorderBug come from three different sources:
- Road sensors from the Whatcom Council of Governments
- Real-time estimates from U.S. CBP (for U.S.-bound traffic)
- CBSA (for Canada-bound traffic)
The app also includes live traffic cam feeds from both the Washington State Department of Transportation and the B.C. Ministry of Transportation. It also includes weather, displayed in Fahrenheit on the Washington side and Celsius on the B.C. side.
Ben told Daily Hive Urbanized that from the time the idea came together to the launch, it took about a few weeks of evenings and weekends.
“It’s been so fun to build!”
In its first month, BorderBug hit over 10,000 page views, which blew Ben away, considering it was a brand new passion project.
We asked where the name came from.
“I wanted something fun and a little playful. A ‘border bug’ felt like the kind of critter that’s always zipping back and forth across the line, which felt right for what the site does.”
Best of all? It’s completely free.
He received a ton of praise when he shared his app on the Bellingham subreddit.
You can check BorderBug out on the official website.
Last month, Daily Hive reported that travel from B.C. to the U.S. had dropped for the 13th consecutive month. The trend began as tensions rose between the U.S. and Canada, stemming from comments from U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Whatcom Council of Governments’ 2025 Changes in Border Volume data shows that in February 2026, the volume of southbound vehicles from B.C. to Washington state dipped by 17 per cent compared to the same period in 2025.
There were nearly 20,000 fewer personal vehicles crossing southbound across the Canada-United States border in B.C. compared to last February.
With files from Daniel Chai
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