Traveling by Car in Mexico – Toll Roads
The good news is that Mexico has a wondrous system of modern, well-maintained, four-lane highways going pretty much anywhere in the Republic you might wish to visit. The bad news is that they are toll roads (Cuotas), and they cost an arm and a leg.
I guess the other good news is that you don’t have to use them; you are always free to use the Libre, the free road, along with the rest of the hoi polloi and most of the trucks. The Libres are generally older, in worse repair, two lanes only, lacking in shoulders for important activities like tire-changing or avoiding oncoming trucks in your lane, hillier/curvier, more congested, and take longer to get from point A to point B.
Despite the above disadvantages, on some stretches the Libres can actually be nicer than the Cuotas (I haven’t been there recently but the Libre between Tijuana and Ensenada was at one time a little paradise on earth in the springtime).
The trouble is, when traveling through unfamiliar territory, how are you going to know? The cautious traveler will usually elect the Cuota the first time around, especially if driving a large vehicle or towing something.
Apart from safety considerations, the Cuotas offer two notable amenities as consolation for the staggering fees they charge.
The first is that they usually have really nice bathrooms, which after all one would hope, at those prices.
An even greater convenience is that most Cuotas will take US dollars in payment, and give you change in pesos. If you find yourself running out of pesos, this can save endless hours of searching for banks or casas de cambio in strange towns. The Cuota stations usually have the (generally reasonable) exchange rate posted prominently on the booth. Some, but not all, will take only $20 bills or smaller. In the many, many toll stations we have passed through in the last two years, I remember seeing only one or two that did not accept dollars.
Mexican toll roads charge by a formula which is posted, with helpful pictures, on the approach to the toll booths. Basically they charge by the number of axles you have, as far as I can figure. So if you’re towing a trailer or driving something with lots of wheels, expect to pay more. On our most recent travels with a cargo trailer, about nine months ago, a cheap toll would be about 19 pesos (~$1.90 USD), an expensive one well in excess of 100 pesos (~$10.00 USD). I seem to recall a couple $20+ tolls. There is no apparent rhyme or reason to the charges with relation to distance; some 19-peso tolls were good for hours of happy motoring, whereas some of the “omigod, 15 bucks!!!” ones paid for only a half-hour stretch.
Driving a gas-guzzling V8 pickup, as we have been doing, and pulling a two-axle cargo trailer, we have found toll charges add up to somewhere between one-half and three-fourths of the amount we pay for gas. If you’re planning to use toll roads when driving in Mexico, be sure to include a generous amount for them in the budget!