Id Expensive Mexico Toll Roads!

So is paying seventy dollars in pesos for what would be charged fifteen in the USA. Carriles llaves are for locals so ESTAFETA goods are charged full bore. High tolls raise the price of everything from breakfast eggs, to tires to medicine.

Mexican business aptitude
WHEN BUSINESS IS DOWN RAISE PRICES

It's the poor who pay through the snotbox for idiocy.

I am certainly not authority on much of anything so not claiming to know about this. What I have read is Mexico privatized these roads because that was the only way to pay for them - give investors the rights to build roads and charge people to use them. The Gov't does have some control but the private companies seem to charge the maximum allowed. The high cost means few people use these roads. If they charged less maybe more people would use the roads and they would get more revenue.

In the US the majority of roads and interstates do not have tolls. I have driven a great many roads in the US as a trucker and as an RVer so I do know where the tolls are. Most US roads are paid for by the fuel taxes - 18 cents a gallon to the feds and varying amounts to the states depending on which state you are in. The feds have not raised the tax on fuel in well over 20 years and now the roads are crumbling and the bridges are falling down. But for the most part we do not pay tolls - except on the east coast of course - and many of those tolls have gone away - they bog down traffic way too much causing massive traffic jambs. We can drive all over the US on interstate roads without paying one single toll if we should want to - but we don't since we mainly drive less traveled roads looking for hidden treasures - and finding them all along the way - just as we do in Mexico.

There are some privatized roads in the US I have heard - one somewhere south of Los Angeles I think but I do not know where any others are. I do not think private roads are the answer. I would have no problem with an increase on the fed fuel tax if they apply every penny of it to the highway system and nowhere else. 18 cents is not a lot when we are paying around $3 a gallon for fuel - only about 6%.

In Mexico by comparison to the US when we use the cuota roads we pay a great deal more per mile or per gallon than in the US. There is the argument that those who do not use the roads should not have to pay for them. But the fuel tax pays for all roads - not just the ones we happen to drive on - but it does pay for the roads we do use. Everyone benefits from a good road system as all of our goods travel these roads at one time or another. If you include various parts going to and from manufacturing facilities to produce finished goods there are many things that travel the roads quite a few times before getting to the consumer. The end result is we all pay for the roads one way or another - directly or indirectly - just as we all benefit from the roads either directly or indirectly.

I remember reading that there is a fuel tax in Mexico - I recall something like 16% but I could be wrong. I also heard that areas near the border were paying a different % so the fuel price at the pump was not the same as the rest of Mexico - I have heard that has changed. So if the Gov't owns the oil in Mexico - and controls the flow of fuel for the most part - and they also collect a tax on fuel - why can't they pay for the roads with those funds. I am sure the word corruption will now come into the conversation. Of course the answers can only be found in fact and not in speculation or rumor or assumption. Mordida. Perhaps we can also assume the funds the Gov't of Mexico collects from the sale of fuel - either the price of the fuel or whatever tax - has never been intended to go to the roads as the tax in the US is supposed to be destined.

In recent years we have noticed some really nice new roads being built all over Mexico - free roads - no tolls. Many new perifericos. Roads have been widened and straightened and just generally improved with new work being done all the time. We do have to endure big construction projects but then the next year we get to drive beautiful new roads. We have been very encouraged by all the nice new roads but we have no idea how they are being paid for.