The state wants a taximeter in every Tulum taxi, and the union wants Shark

Tulum's taxi union put a 24-zone fare board into circulation last Thursday and presented it as official. A day later, the state said it authorized nothing, and that taximeters in Tulum come next.

The document went out on the union's social media accounts on September 3. It runs from the town center out to the Rosa Negra restaurant on the Tulum to Boca Paila road, taking in the archaeological zone, the Costera and the Mirador along the way, and it tops out at 300 pesos.

What it does not carry, according to a review published by La Jornada Maya, is any of the marks that would make it official. No agreement number. No signature. No seal. No authorization date. No reference to anything the Instituto de Movilidad del Estado de Quintana Roo has published.

That matters more here than it would in most towns. The last fare table Imoveqroo published for this municipality dates from 2019, and seven years of rides have been priced in the gap since. Thursday's board is the first document in that stretch to tell a passenger in Tulum what a trip is supposed to cost. It is also the one the state says nobody approved.

Twenty-four zones where the 2019 table recognized eighteen

The new board splits the municipality into six more zones than the state table it replaces, and the splitting is where the money is.

La Jornada Maya compared the two documents. It found that La Veleta went from a single 31-peso destination to three separate zones priced at 50, 80, and 100 pesos, and that the increase for the third of them reached 222.6 percent. The fare from the center to Yaax Tulum increased from 32 pesos to 70 pesos. The number of centers in the archaeological zone went from 49 to 90.

The floor moved as well. While the 2019 table opened at 31 pesos, the union's board starts at 50 pesos.

Manuel Enrique Solís Alcocer, the union's general secretary, has not disputed any of those figures. He has said the charges are not new, that drivers were already applying them informally, and that the board's role is to write down areas the old table never contemplated.

That is an argument about paperwork rather than about price. The zones are new. The fares attached to them are the ones passengers say they were already paying, and now they are printed.

Only the institute can set a tariff, the mobility law says

Quintana Roo's Ley de Movilidad puts tariff-setting with Imoveqroo. The institute sets fares and publishes them, and concessionaires are obliged to display those that have already been approved.

Read against that, a printed board and a QR code are transparency measures. Transparency and authority are separate things, and only one of them sets the price to which a passenger can hold a driver.

Hernández Kotasek draws his line at two kilometers

Rafael Hernández Kotasek, who heads Imoveqroo, laid out the state's position in an interview with Radio Turquesa, which was reported on September 4. No increase to Tulum taxi fares has been authorized. Meters are what the institute is working toward, for the town and for the coastal strip.

On the union's request, he was more specific. He said he had heard the argument that fares needed adjusting, and that arbitrary charges in particular areas were benefiting certain concessionaires out of all proportion. Drivers who were not covering their costs would probably do better under a meter. A two-kilometer run out to the coastal zone, he said, cannot cost 800 pesos.

That number carries weight in this town. When Tulum merchants and service providers issued a public apology to visitors in October 2025, Reportur listed short-trip taxi fares above 800 pesos among the problems that had become notorious about the destination.

Taximeters in Tulum arrive bolted to a much larger rebuild

The meter is not a device the institute plans to install on its own. It sits inside a restructuring of public transport across Quintana Roo that Hernández Kotasek described in the same interview.

The state has moved concessionaires off the hombre-camión model, where individual permit holders ran their own units with little control over schedules, and onto what he calls the hombre-empresa model. The authority sets frequencies and routes. Operating companies are paid per kilometer, in line with digital compliance standards and real-time monitoring. Contactless payment, the Mobi App, and prepaid cards belong to the same package, with zoned tariff schemes named as a later possibility.

Chetumal is where the sequencing becomes visible. Hernández Kotasek told Noticaribe in June that he could not authorize a taxi fare increase in the capital while the service was unchanged and passengers had no alternative, because in Chetumal the choice was taxi or taxi. Speaking to Quintana Roo Hoy in August, he framed it as an order of operations. Other cities charge fares on a meter or by zone. Chetumal's fare gets freed, he said, once MOBI is finished.

Tulum has no MOBI network, no urban bus system, and no working ride-hailing, a shortage The Tulum Times has traced to the union's own resistance. Whether the meter reaches this municipality before an alternative exists, or waits for one, as Chetumal's fare increase is waiting, is the part the institute has not addressed.

A California firm is building the union's platform

The union's preferred instrument is software. Its general secretary has said the most precise answer will be the union's own application, Shark, and that it will give passengers more certainty than any board can.

Something is being built. Marcrix Noticias and Grupo Pirámide both reported in early September that the union is developing a digital platform with the California firm Fly Wheels, organized into four categories covering foráneo and local colectivos, taxis, and the taxi rosa service, with prepaid card payments planned for a later phase. Neither report names the product. The Tulum Times could not establish whether Shark is that platform or a separate project.

The codes are further along than the app. La Jornada Maya reported that the Tulum to Playa del Carmen colectivos will have a uniform look and standardized fare boards readable via QR code, with the same codes posted at the stops so a passenger can check the price before boarding.

None of that changes whose signature belongs on the tariff.

Imoveqroo has not ordered the board taken down

The institute has said the tabulador lacks official authorization. It has not published a competing table, set a date for the meters, or instructed the union to withdraw the document from the units.

Hernández Kotasek has said the goal is certainty about the price before the passenger gets in, whatever the shift, the weekend or the holiday, and that the meter program will extend to other municipalities. He named Benito Juárez, where complaints about what drivers charge are constant.

All of this lands on a municipality whose tourism economy is already in trouble, and on a union that reads the room in more than one direction. Less than a year ago, it filed a proposal with Imoveqroo to cut fares for residents, which The Tulum Times covered at the time. No revised tariff has been published since then, and the document now in circulation moves the numbers in the opposite direction. The same union was placed under review by the state prosecutor's office last October, as this publication reported at the time.

Until Imoveqroo publishes that board or orders it off the windshields, the 24 zones are the only fare list a passenger in Tulum can read, and the state's position is that nobody with the power to approve it ever did.

Would a meter in a Tulum taxi change what you actually pay, or would the fare find a way around it? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.