Summit of the Americas in Mexico City Tracks Explosive Growth in Tolling, Transportation

An extended network of tolled facilities. Explosive growth in transportation demand. A flurry of regional economic opportunities. It all adds up to a sure recipe for fascinating discussion and breakthrough business networking at IBTTA’s Summit of the Americas, October 16-18,2016 in Mexico City.

This is IBTTA’s first major conference in Mexico, and the timing couldn’t be better. It’s a vibrant country featuring 140 toll concessions. Content will cover a wide range of topics including border crossing, international trade, freight tracking, truck tolling, security, mobile enforcement, interoperability and the Mexican concession model. We will also focus on toll road operations, customer service, public relations and adapting to a different business climate.

All of which takes on added significance in one of the world’s most vibrant, fast-paced transportation markets.

The country saw the number of registered vehicles more than triple from 11 to 34 million between 1995 and 2010, a period in which its road network only grew about 20%.

It now has 8,156 kilometres (5,067 miles) of tolled highways in 126 facilities, operated by 35 concessionaires, where all-electronic tolling and improved customer service are at the center of the effort to meet mobility demands in Latin America’s third-largest country.

And Mexico is part of a region on the move, with the $5.3-billion expansion of the Panama Canal expected to set off a wave of new economic activity.

For anyone looking for the next focal point for the development of user-financed transportation, Mexico is clearly the place to be.

Strengthening the Weakest Link

It’s a lot easier to sell a product—or a concept, like user financing—when a customer already needs it, and knows it. For Mexico and Latin America, tolling is the opportunity to strengthen the weakest link.

The expanded Panama Canal is expected to serve as “a gateway for gigantic Post-Panamax freighters originating in Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina to carry goods through several major Mexican ports,” the Summit for Americas program explains. “But an expanded freight and logistics network is only as strong as its weakest link. With limited rail coverage through most of the region, a new toll road is already in place to serve the port of Tuxpan, and wider use of tolling is seen as a key ingredient of one of the region’s most important infrastructure projects in a generation.”

That activity, in turn, is amping up the opportunity for toll operations across the Mexico-United States border. “On both sides of the line, tolling is seen as an opportunity to clear congestion and reduce often horrendous wait times—particularly for commercial carriers who measure their time in dollars, cents, and pesos, not hours and minutes,” the program notes.

Building a Business Environment

But new economic opportunities can only develop and thrive when the business structures are right, and when the operating environment is safe, secure, and efficient.

“When public sector funding is severely constrained, who’re you going to call?” the program asks. “If you’re an agency in Mexico trying to address an immediate need for highway capacity, the most common solution is to build new toll roads as public-private partnerships, based on unsolicited proposals from the private sector.”

While funding is the fundamental first step, delivering a successful project also depends on safe, secure operations—and, increasingly, on seamless interoperability across multiple concessionaires and electronic toll collection (ETC) providers. The Summit of the Americas will provide an essential snapshot of a country and a region that are sweating the details—all the details—to deliver reliability mobility for goods and people.

We hope you will join us in Mexico City October 16-18, 2016!

Mark your calendar and check out the program for IBTTA’s Summit of the Americas, October 16-18 in Mexico City.