Fewer stops on the avenue, and passengers walk the difference to reach Playa

Two boarding points on Tulum's main avenue stopped being used, and the union that runs vans to Playa del Carmen says the space is being cleared for a competitor rather than for traffic.

Moisés Paul Quijano, secretary general of UNTRAC Sección II, said at least two stops were taken out of service under the argument of easing congestion. He accused the authorities of intending to allow the Tiburones del Caribe union to use those same spaces to run local collective services within Tulum. The municipal government has not confirmed that, and the claim rests solely on UNTRAC's account.

Where a van may legally stop is not a small administrative detail on this corridor. It sets how far a passenger walks at each end of the trip, how many people a driver picks up before reaching the highway, and which of three competing organizations collects the fare from the workers who ride between the two towns every morning.

Quijano names Tiburones del Caribe as the union that gains

The accusation is specific. Quijano said UNTRAC believes the intention behind the closures is to open those curbs to Tiburones del Caribe for urban collective service, and that the outcome would favor a single organization rather than the groups that have shared the route for years.

That matters because of what Tiburones already holds. La Jornada Maya reported in 2025 that the union is the only one providing mobility services within Tulum, operating taxis and a small number of urban collective units for residents without cars, and that passengers had complained about service quality and pricing under that arrangement.

UNTRAC has wanted into that market for at least two years. In the same 2025 report, Quijano said his union was in talks with the Tiburones leadership and with municipal and state authorities to be allowed to serve neighborhoods south of the town center, naming Cristal, Ya'ax Tulum, Xul-ká and Maritez among them. Nothing came of it publicly.

No municipal statement addressing the reassignment of those two stops has been published. The allegation stands as UNTRAC's position and nothing more.

The July order that pushed boarding into the terminals

The closures did not appear out of nowhere. On July 28, the Ayuntamiento de Tulum and the Instituto de Movilidad de Quintana Roo announced an operation to remove irregular stops along high-traffic avenues, sending crews to remove cones, unauthorized signs, and structures that transport groups had installed on the public roadway. The municipality said inspectors would continue patrolling to keep units at the unified sites.

The scheme behind that operation was explained the same day by Manuel Solís, secretary general of Tiburones del Caribe, in remarks published by Quintana Roo Hoy. Intermediate stops for out-of-town units would go, and boarding would concentrate at authorized terminals, on a model he said was borrowed from Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Playa del Carmen.

"Intermediate stops are eliminated and the public will have to go to the terminals; at the same time we are coordinating the collective services so as not to make trips more expensive and to reduce the presence of units in the downtown area," Solís said.

A free feeder service started that week, connecting Aldea Tulum and the Las Palmas subdivision with the transport terminals during what Solís called an adaptation period. He also acknowledged that the sector was going through a difficult stretch, with low activity throughout 2025 and 2026 and no increase in riders that international events had been expected to bring.

Passengers walk the difference

The complaint UNTRAC raises on behalf of riders is the plainest part of the story. Passengers heading north now have to walk several blocks to reach a van bound for Playa del Carmen, on a stretch of the avenue where vans used to pull over closer to where people already were.

The scale of that inconvenience is easier to picture with an older number. When the stop at the junction of Avenida Cobá and Avenida Tulum was relocated in 2023, the union leadership at the time put daily boardings there at between 1,000 and 1,200 people, rising about 20 percent in holiday periods.

Ridership has since collapsed. Union representatives told reporters in August 2025 that daily passengers on the corridor had fallen from roughly 70,000 to between 30,000 and 35,000, with the fare at 60 pesos, and that operators had cut the daily quota drivers must pay in to keep them working. Those figures come from the unions themselves and have not been independently verified.

May's dispute was over 10 passengers per van

Four months ago the alliances ran the other way.

In May, Quijano warned that the route could face a partial or total stoppage after the Lázaro Cárdenas del Río union in Playa del Carmen changed departure conditions, limiting UNTRAC vans to 10 passengers while other groups left with as many as 15 passengers. He said the measure broke agreements the three unions had signed under guidelines promoted by state authorities to keep the route balanced, and that leaving with five fewer passengers barely covered fuel.

Now UNTRAC says it is coordinating with the same Lázaro Cárdenas del Río Sección 13 to oppose any decision that benefits a single organization. The pairing is worth noting, because it shows what holds this route together. Not a published concession map, but a shifting set of understandings between three unions that have also fought each other in the street. Two drivers, one from UNTRAC and one from Tiburones, traded punches at a stop on the Tulum to Playa del Carmen stretch in December 2025, and the state mobility institute suspended both units for 30 days.

Who decides where a Tulum to Playa del Carmen colectivo stops

The question the dispute keeps returning to has no clean answer on paper.

The municipal mobility directorate is defining and signposting the official boarding points. IMOVEQROO regulates concessions at the state level and enforces suspensions. Neither has published a map of which union may work which curb, which is why every adjustment ends up as a negotiation between organizations rather than the application of a rule.

The Tulum Times has covered what that gap produces at street level, from the unions' long resistance to taximeters to the reasons ride-hailing is legal here and still almost unusable. Visitors arriving from the north can compare the options in our guide to getting from Cancun airport to Tulum.

Quijano has asked the municipal authorities and the mayor's office to review how the stops were distributed and to build an agreement with the organizations that have historically worked the route. No meeting has been announced, and the city has not responded to the accusation regarding Tiburones del Caribe. Until it does, the two closed stops stay closed, and the walk stays longer.

Have the new boarding rules changed how long it takes you to get from Tulum to Playa del Carmen? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.