Will the fare in Tulum's new taxi app match what the driver charges?

Ten days to the Play Store, a month to the full launch. That is the timeline Tiburones del Caribe has posted on a Tulum taxi app, listing its fares and colectivo schedules.

Manuel Solís, secretary general of the taxi union, said the application is being built with the California company Flywheel and will open with four categories, one each for the out-of-town colectivos, the local colectivos, the standard taxi, and the taxi rosa driven by women. The two colectivo categories carry departure times. All four carry a fare.

That last part is what matters in a town where one organization moves almost everyone who does not own a car. La Jornada Maya reported last year that Tiburones del Caribe is the only union providing mobility services within Tulum, operating taxis and a small fleet of urban collective units, and that passengers had complained about pricing under that arrangement. The price of a trip has been settled at the window, driver by driver.

Four categories in the Tulum taxi app

The union is presenting the platform as fare information rather than a hailing service. It lists what a ride costs and, for shared vans, when they leave. The fare section covers the ruleteras, the cabs that cruise for passengers instead of waiting at a stand, and the union says the number will appear with no margin for error. That is its answer to the discretionary charging riders have complained about for years.

Solís was specific about the calendar. "In a month at most, this application would be ready," he said, adding that the union expects it in Google's Play Store within 10 days and in Apple's store after that.

A second phase is supposed to add prepaid card payments.

The vans already carry GPS, and riders finally get to see it

The most useful function for a daily passenger has nothing to do with price. The out-of-town units already have GPS installed, and the union plans to use those receivers to publish each van's position in real time, so that someone heading to Playa del Carmen can walk out the door when the van is close instead of standing on the shoulder of Highway 307 waiting for one that has not left the terminal.

That function arrives on a route the authorities reorganized six weeks ago. On July 28, the Tulum city government and the Instituto de Movilidad de Quintana Roo removed irregular stops from the main avenues and moved boarding to authorized terminals, a change that has already made the walk to a colectivo longer for passengers heading north. A rider with farther to go gains more from knowing exactly when the van departs.

Fare boards and uniforms came first

Solís said the union spent the past two weeks standardizing the look of its collective units, local and out-of-town, putting drivers in uniform and checking that every vehicle displays its fare board.

Those boards are not new. They already carry a QR code that opens a page with a more detailed price list, an idea the union raised in November 2025 alongside a fare revision it expected from Imoveqroo, and announced again in July for taxis, vans, and busy pickup points. Each version pushed the same information one step closer to the passenger without ever putting it in the passenger's hand. The app is the step where it lands there.

Solís framed the goal himself in November 2025, when he told The Tulum Times he would like a single price regardless of whether the passenger is a tourist or a resident, and acknowledged that getting there would be gradual. Ten months later, the app is the first tool the union has offered that lets a passenger check the price without asking the driver.

Flywheel has been working in Tulum since April

This is the second project the union has built on the same partnership. On April 14, it presented SITS by Flywheel, described in local coverage as a system that records every trip digitally and monitors units in real time, developed in coordination with the state mobility institute and the state public security ministry. That system pointed the technology at the union and the authorities. The app points it at the rider.

Solís said platforms of this kind were born in California 20 years ago and have since spread widely across Mexico. The company's own record is shorter. Flywheel began in San Francisco as Cabulous, launched under that name in 2010, and rebranded in December 2012, building software for licensed taxi fleets rather than competing with them. That is the model the union is buying into.

Whose fare goes on the screen?

The union has not said whether the figure a passenger reads on the screen will be the tabulador that Imoveqroo authorizes or the union's own price list, and that distinction decides most of what the app is worth. A published union price is still a union price. A published official tariff gives a rider something to point at.

Nor is there a date for the prepaid cards, in a town where a taxi ride is settled in cash and the price is agreed before the trip starts. In the meantime, visitors weighing their options can read about the cost of getting around Tulum without a car.

The first test comes quickly. Solís put the Play Store listing at roughly 10 days out, which places it in mid-September, and the first thing anyone can check is whether the fare on the screen matches the fare on the board inside the car.

Would a published fare change how you get around Tulum, or is the problem what happens after you get in? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes .