Mexico's toll road woes

Mexico is once again bullish on toll roads, despite disasterous tries in the 1980s. The Times' Marla Dickerson reports, however, that things aren't going so well this time either:

This was supposed to be Mexico's toll road to the future, a four-lane, privately built ribbon of asphalt connecting Cuernavaca with the Pacific resort city of Acapulco. But now, just 14 years after opening, the Autopista del Sol, or Sun Highway, is a 163-mile mess. Motorists complain of blown tires and ruined suspensions. A national newspaper last year called the thoroughfare, on which a round trip costs $70, "a calvary of cracks, potholes and risks." The government has been forced to spend more than $60 million to shore up the crumbling motorway linking Morelos and Guerrero states after its operator walked away. Overall, Mexico assumed $14 billion of debt after bailing out nearly two dozen other such projects in the 1990s.