Luis Guitierrez

On average, 1.5 hours just to get out of the residential areas and reach Blvd. Cuauhtémoc Sur to downtown Tijuana.

The area known as the Santa Fe neighborhood and its surrounding areas was one of the most promising housing developments in Tijuana three decades ago. But now an estimated 85,000 people live in an eight-square-mile area.

The neighborhoods lie just off Highway 1, 5.5 miles north of Rosarito, 6.5 miles south of Tijuana's Zona Rio. Most houses are between 450 and 500 square feet.

A public transport van in Cedros neighborhood

The overcrowding has had its consequences for all those who live of the first, second, and third section of Santa Fe, Real del Mar, Lomas de San Antonio plus the first, second, and third sections of Cedros, Viñas del Mar, Vista Bella, and Villas de Santa Fe.

All these neighborhoods have just two entrances and two exits with two lanes each. On May 4 the municipal government started work to add a third lane on each road, which has intensively in-creased the traffic wait for drivers. On average, 1.5 hours just to get out of the residential areas and reach Blvd. Cuauhtémoc Sur that leads to downtown Tijuana.

According to a resident of Cedros, Maite Mandujano, nobody told her about this issue before she bought her house three years ago, and since she moved in, the heavy traffic became something normal, so now, due to the construction, she has waited up to three hours.

“We chose to live here with our family because it was a safe area and the real estate value, it had all we needed, even a full kitchen; the only negative was that we were far from our jobs and the schools of our children, but we thought it was the best option for us to live in. With the passage of time, it has become such a hardship for us to leave the house at 5:30 am to be on time at work and delivering kids to school. Sometimes I can’t make it to school on time and my daughters have it to stay with me."

Blvd. El Rosario is one of the entrances. It's being fully reconstructed, which means for the neighbors that one entrance is completely closed and Blvd. Santa Fe is the only one for the 85,000 inhabitants to exit. Alma Noemi, another resident, says people’s despair to get to their jobs has caused car accidents that has added more time to waiting.

“The times I've been late due to car accidents my boss takes away part of my salary. Nobody respects the right shoulder lane, even public transport uses it to avoid the traffic.

“I heard about a man that threatened a woman with a gun to cut the line. I'm scared of not letting someone cut the line now."

Both locals believe that the city and the construction company have a part in the lack of urban planning. “But I think the government has more responsibility for this because they are the ones that give construction permits, probably because of a bribe,” Alma Noemi says.

For now, the municipal government estimates that work will take five months to get done.

Some neighbors are gathering signatures in order to stop the construction of this third lane, arguing that a true solution would be to build up more access roads instead of what they're doing now. “I want to believe that these constructions will fix the problem of traffic, but honestly I doubt it because they're still building more residential areas around” Maite Mandujano states.