Neighbors report repeated crashes where La Veleta meets a highway with no crosswalk

The neighborhood committee of La Veleta has asked the federal highway agency for a road safety study at the intersection of Avenida Quinta Sur and Highway 307, one of the neighborhood's main entrances.

Verónica Genovali, president of the Comité Vecinal de La Veleta, signed the five-page filing on September 21 and addressed it to the head of the SICT Centro in Quintana Roo. Copies went to the Tulum town hall, the municipal transit and mobility office, the state mobility institute IMOVEQROO, and the federal road conservation office for the state.

Everything entering or leaving that part of Tulum passes through the corner, and it does so on a road built for through traffic between Cancún and Chetumal. The committee's description of the site is blunt. There is no visible signal control and no protected pedestrian crossing, leaving anyone on foot waiting for a gap in the continuous traffic. La Veleta has absorbed a decade of the town's residential growth, and its main door opens onto federal asphalt.

The corridor never stops for Avenida Quinta Sur

The petition fixes the location three ways: coordinates 20.2057617 and -87.4794745, a Plus Code, and the reference every driver in town uses, the corner at Gypsea Market. The chainage, the official measurement that tells SICT where along the highway the point falls, is left blank for the agency to confirm.

What happens there, according to the document, is that cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and people on foot enter, leave, and cut across a corridor of continuous circulation. Photographs annexed to the filing show a motorcycle in a transversal maneuver and vehicles merging into the flow. The committee argues that speeds, multiple lanes, and turning movements combine to create conflict points and waiting times long enough to push people into making risky crossing decisions.

One line in the document forecloses the cheapest answer. The problem needs an integral evaluation, the committee writes, and not the isolated placement of a conventional speed bump.

Seven requests for a La Veleta road safety study

The petition rests on the right of petition in article 8 of the Mexican Constitution, on the federal law governing roads and bridges, on the General Mobility and Road Safety Law, and on NOM-034-SCT2/SEDATU-2022, the norm that sets signage and road devices for streets and highways.

From that base, it asks for seven things. Open a file and assign a folio. Send inspectors to the site at different peak periods, alongside state and municipal authorities. Run the counts and measurements. Issue a feasibility ruling on an integral solution. Apply provisional measures while the study is underway. Convene a technical roundtable with the town hall, IMOVEQROO and SICT, with the committee at the table. Answer in writing, and if the agency considers itself the wrong authority, forward the file to the right one and say so.

The annex spells out what an inspection would have to measure.

• Vehicle and pedestrian volumes by movement, with turns, queues, crossing gaps and peak periods
• Operating speed and the 85th percentile on the approaches
• Paths taken by pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists, and universal accessibility
• Visibility, lighting, drainage, signage, lanes, returns and right of way
• Official crash records with severity, time of day and type of conflict

The alternatives the committee wants weighed are listed in the same annex: vehicle and pedestrian signals, protected turn phases, an accessible and marked crosswalk, refuge islands, preventive signage, lighting, rumble strips, and speed management devices. Residents offered to accompany the visit and give observations during the hours they consider worst.

One collision in the press archive

The filing carries a single documented antecedent. It cites a report published by Por Esto! on July 18, 2025, about a young motorcyclist injured in a collision with a pickup on Federal Highway 307 in front of Gypsea Market. The committee asks authorities to verify that account and complete it with official records.

Since then, the document says, residents have reported numerous further incidents at the same location, including collisions between cars, crashes involving motorcyclists, and dogs struck by vehicles. They also report that a person on foot finds it practically impossible to cross because the traffic does not stop and there is nowhere safe to do so.

The committee is careful about the standing of those accounts. Neighbor reports do not replace official statistics, the petition states, which is why it asks the study to consult and validate the crash record held by the competent authorities.

Signatures for the town hall, a petition for the federation

Alongside the filing, neighbors are gathering signatures to pressure the municipal government to fix the same intersection.

The two tracks answer a jurisdictional split. Avenida Tulum along that stretch is Federal Highway 307, which places the roadway and the devices installed on it under federal authority rather than municipal control. Tulum's public security and transit regulation assigns the municipal force responsibility for the operation of the traffic light network and for the road engineering studies that determine where speed control devices are installed, but those powers apply only to municipal streets. On the 307, the town hall can request. The federal agency signs off.

That is why the sixth request matters more than its place in the list suggests. A technical roundtable with the three authorities in one room is the step designed to put the municipal, state, and federal sides on the same schedule rather than passing the file between them.

Hoteliers asked for the same crossings in August

A month before the petition, the same road came up from a different quarter. On August 22, the Consejo Hotelero del Caribe Mexicano listed pedestrian crossings, bus shelters and effective speed controls among what Highway 307 needs before the winter high season. Its president, David Ortiz Mena, described the road as a problem for people who live in the region as much as for the people who visit it.

The first of the committee's seven requests is the smallest one. A folio number would prove the file exists and that someone inside SICT owns it. As of publication, the committee had reported no folio, and the neighbors along Avenida Quinta Sur were still collecting names.

Have you tried to cross Highway 307 on foot at the La Veleta entrance? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.