How long is the average wait at the american/canadian border in washington and how much to drive a car over?

There is no charge for crossing the border, but if you want to have faster access, you can buy a Nexus pass - I think it is an annual $50 fee. The wait at the border is really unpredictable. If you go during morning or afternoon rush hours, you could sit there for two or more hours. If you go on a holiday (and remember that the US and Canada don't always have the same holidays) you can really get stuck in traffic. But at other times, you can whiz right through. Sorry, there's really no way of predicting wait times.

If the border crossing you are looking at is the one at Blaine WA, the closest one to Vancouver, I would give up any idea of commuting across the border. There is no toll charge to enter Canada, but this is notoriously one of the slowest crossings from Canada to the USA. Going towards Canada is more variable, but if you study the statistics you will find that multi-hour waits going south are pretty much the norm. It would probably be much easier, and save huge amounts of gas and time, to live in Canada. Sorry!

You can check border wait times on the CBSA(Canadian Border Services Agency) website, and no doubt you can do the same with the US Border Patrol. How long the waits are will vary considerably depending on time of day, weekend or weekday, season, holidays, and which crossing you're using. An hour or more is not unusual. There are several crossings between BC and Washington. You don't pay anything to cross the border. Green Cards are US issued and don't mean anything in Canada. There are Nexus cards for quick crossing for people who cross the border frequently, but if you're crossing into Canada daily, they may want to know why so you'd better have the right legal stuff for working here.