The government is set to invest 10 billion pesos (about US $470 million) in Cancún, Quintana Roo, to upgrade infrastructure in the tourist destination, President López Obrador announced this week.

The Caribbean city will receive funds for the Nichupté Bridge, a new 8.7 kilometer road connection over the Nichupté Lagoon linking the city to the hotel zone, and for renovations to the Luis Donaldo Colosio avenue, which connects the hotel zone to the airport and the city. 

The president said it was high time the avenue was attended to, and explained how it would be funded: “We are going to improve that avenue, Colosio, which is the principal one and is in very bad condition, totally destroyed. We have already made the commitment to redo it … with hydraulic concrete, taking care that the drainage and water systems are also reconstructed. It is a project that we are going to do jointly between the state government and the federal government,” he said. 

The government’s financial commitment to the Nichupté Bridge means a previous funding plan, a public private partnership, will be scrapped.

Governor Carlos Manuel Joaquín said the change in funding for the bridge would reduce the investment and force the project to be scaled back. “It is an issue that we are going to present in the next visit that the president makes; it will no longer be a public private partnership. The bridge had very broad goals. In addition to vehicle lanes, it included bicycle lanes, and maintenance schemes during the years of the concession, but now, faced with the possibility of being a public project, they will be lost. The goals of the project will have to be reduced,” he said. 

The president also announced a 300 hectare recreational park in Tulum called The Park of the Jaguar, near an archaeological reserve, through which he aims to protect the area from over-development.

Quintana Roo has benefited from high levels of government investment. A new airport is under construction in Tulum, and it is one of five states where the $8-billion Maya Train project will run once completed, which is scheduled to start operating in 2023.

With reports from El Economista