Tijuana’s Yellow Cabs in Peril?

For decades, Tijuana’s Taxis Amarillos (Yellow Cab) franchise lot was located a few hundred feet from its greatest source of customers, just north of the U.S. border entryway into Mexico. Thousands of potential clientes every day would parade by the lot, which contained perhaps a couple dozen cabs ready to go at any time, available to launch up to five passengers to all points throughout the sprawling warrens of the city.

Now, the cab drivers are bewildered by changes taking place on the border. They have become strangers in a strange new territory. This is what you might interpret if you were listening to some of the comments issued by Taxis Amarillos spokesperson Manuel Zavala.

According to Zavala, in the aftermath of recent construction, the organization and its drivers have been left completely uninformed by Mexican transportation and planning officials regarding the future of their border location.

Taxis Amarillos have been plying the streets of Tijuana since around 1920, when the roads were still dirt and there were only two (roads). Since they started business, the cab company has had a virtual lock, by virtue of its lot location, on the multitudes of pedestrians who cross into Mexico

Zavala notes that there are now Yellow Cab lots on both east and west sides of the San Ysidro entryway. Also, a cluster of taxistas, sporting the traditional yellow shirts and black slacks but unaffiliated with Yellow Cab, loiter about the base of the pedestrian bridge that crosses over the U.S.-bound traffic at the newly opened entrance into Mexico. The drivers direct would-be Yellow Cab customers to the “pirate” lot located on the eastern side of the traffic jam, although a walk of perhaps a hundred more yards would place them right in front of the still-functioning old Yellow Cab lot.

Zavala said, in a quote published in Frontera on October 10, that the taxi firm has no way of knowing the final outcome of the border-crossing system. Will there be one way into Mexico, as in the past? Or two?

Zavala also added that handicapped persons — on crutches, in wheelchairs — have been left out in regards to the new situation: At the old lot there were modifications made to assist the discapacitados (handicapped).