The first stage of Guadalajara’s outer city ring road, the macrolibramiento, is expected open once Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval returns from his vacation at the end of next week.
The toll road will cut the journey times of those traveling from the Lake Chapala area to the Guadalajara-Mexico City autopista and the highway to Zapotlanejo, Los Altos de Jalisco, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato and routes north to the U.S. border via San Luis Potosi.
Last Monday, dignitaries and journalists were treated to a try out on the pristine asphalt of the inaugural 26.5-kilometer stretch that runs from the Guadalajara-Chapala highway to the Autopista to Zapotlanejo.
Fees for using this four-lane strip of highway were announced this week by the federal Transportation and Communication Secretariat (SCT). Motorcycles will be charged 21 pesos, private vehicles 44 pesos and goods trucks between 54 and 93 pesos.
Toll booths will be located at the seven exits along the 111-kilometer highway.
The macrolibramiento’s remaining 85.5 kilometers, running in the other direction from the Chapala highway to the Guadalajara-Tepic autopista, should be ready for opening by the end of 2016, said Bernardo Gutierrez, the SCT delegate in Jalisco.
Legal fees to resolve disputes with farmers’ cooperatives (ejidos) over appropriation of land has cost the federal government an additional 200 million pesos, Gutierrez admitted. The final budget for the highway is expected to be more than five billion pesos ($US268 million), he said.