Bumps ahead for a toll-road push in Mexico

[Judi Lynn]

Source: L. A. Times

Bumps ahead for a toll-road push in Mexico
Many citizens, wary of past bailouts and present potholes, look askance at Calderon's steps toward privatization.
By Marla Dickerson, Times Staff Writer
April 20, 2007


LA AUTOPISTA DEL SOL, MEXICO — This was supposed to be Mexico's toll road to the future, a four-lane, privately built ribbon of asphalt connecting Cuernavaca with the Pacific resort city of Acapulco.

But now, just 14 years after opening, the Autopista del Sol, or Sun Highway, is a 163-mile mess. Motorists complain of blown tires and ruined suspensions. A national newspaper last year called the thoroughfare, on which a round trip costs $70, "a calvary of cracks, potholes and risks."

The government has been forced to spend more than $60 million to shore up the crumbling motorway linking Morelos and Guerrero states after its operator walked away. Overall, Mexico assumed $14 billion of debt after bailing out nearly two dozen other such projects in the 1990s.

So it may come as a bit of a surprise that President Felipe Calderon is touting toll roads as a solution to Mexico's infrastructure woes. His administration is moving aggressively to award contracts to private companies to finance, build and maintain highways and charge motorists to use them.

It's a strategy being embraced by cash-strapped governments worldwide. France, Italy and Spain have privatized former state-owned toll road companies. New urban expressways in Australia are operated by private companies under long-term concessions from the government. India is looking to upgrade more than 6,000 miles of existing roads with similar toll-road contracts. Public-private partnerships are helping fuel China's infrastructure boom.


Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexhighways20apr20,1,1031711.story?coll=la-headlines-world

[High Plains]

1. Those Mexican toll roads were so expensive...

that they attracted highwaymen who understood that anyone traveling on them had a bunch of money.

My friends in Mexico City would fly rather than drive. It didn't cost much more, and they didn't have to worry about getting robbed.

On the other hand, they sure are nice if you have the money. They're pretty empty and you can fly. Of course, that's provided the road is in good shape.

[Javaman]

2. "award contracts to private companies to finance"...

yeah this fell out of the sky...

:eyes:

[hogwyld]

3. They're trying to cut their expenses

With Cantarell crashing, and the prospect of losing a chunck of oil money, they're trying to get rid of as many liabilities as they can, and prepare for the downside of peak oil.