Merchants oppose highway toll to El Golfo

The toll charged to travel the new highway to El Golfo de Santa Clara, Son., is undermining efforts to develop the fishing community's tourism potential, according to El Golfo residents and merchants who want the state of Sonora to reduce it.

Ramon Concha, a restaurant and hotel owner in El Golfo, said merchants and residents are prepared to go so far as to stage a blockade on the highway between San Luis Rio Colorado and El Golfo if state officials won't heed their concerns.

The state established a one-way toll of 94 pesos - about $7 in U.S. currency - after the opening earlier this month of the highway. It begins on the east side of San Luis Rio Colorado at Highway 2 and goes directly south to El Golfo, located on the northernmost end of the Sea of Cortez, then continues south to Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point.

Concha, one of the organizers of the campaign to reduce the toll, said the charge represents a financial hardship for tourists and El Golfo residents alike.

"We've already received complaints from tourists about the toll," said Concha, who established his businesses in the 1990s along El Golfo's beaches.

El Golfo traditionally has been a commercial fishing village, but state officials in recent years have sought to exploit its tourism potential by promoting its beaches to U.S. tourists seeking water recreation.

Under one incentive program, El Golfo fishermen who surrender their fishing permits to the federal government are given funds to start up tourism-oriented businesses in El Golfo. Some who have taken the government up on the deal are building cabins that will be rented out to visitors. At least 50 cabins are planned, bringing the total number of rooms available for visitors to 400.

"Those ventures aren't going to work if there's no tourism," Concha said. "We'll stay (in El Golfo) because we're well-established and we've been here a long time, but with a highway that is so expensive, I don't believe tourism will increase."

The new highway shaves 30 minutes off the time it used to take motorists to travel to El Golfo along an existing, narrower road that twists and turns through farmland in the San Luis Valley on the way to the gulf. There is no toll to use that road.

"Who is going to pay almost 200 pesos more to save less than a half-hour on the road?" Concha asked. "Tourists are going to choose to continue using the road that crosses through the valley."

The new two-lane highway was built with Sonora state funds but was turned over to a private company to administer. The state continues to set the toll charge.

Concha said the toll for the two-lane highway is excessive in light of the fact that the toll to use the lengthier, four-lane highway between San Luis Rio Colorado and Mexicali, Baja Calif., is 12.50 pesos one way.

He said El Golfo merchants and residents will bring their issues to Manuel Baldenebro, the newly elected mayor of San Luis Rio Colorado, in the hope he can prevail on the state to lower the toll.

"But if there's no response, the people are prepared to block the highway to make their case."