With the idea of promoting tourism, the Puerto Vallarta City Council invested more than $2 million pesos in a project that would lead to the construction of a cable car, but the work did not materialize.
The cable car, announced on May 5, 2019, by then Mayor Arturo Dávalos, intended to connect the Vallarta Malecón, at the Hotel Rosita, with the Cerro de la Cruz viewpoint.
The City Council’s expectation was that the project could be executed with public and private investment, but to determine if the construction was viable, the Government of Puerto Vallarta chose to launch the LPN CM/035/2020 tender on December 8, 2020.
With the tendered service, it was intended to identify the costs of the project and its profitability, so that it could be promoted before private investors or public entities with the capacity to absorb the costs.
“The Municipality of Puerto Vallarta has decided to carry out feasibility studies (…) that will allow it to determine the feasibility of building a transportation system to promote tourism, reduce road congestion and provide an efficient, safe and comfortable service. “, was noted in the call available on the City Council’s Transparency portal.
On January 8, 2021, the Municipal Procurement Commission awarded the tender for feasibility studies to the company Controles y Medidores Especializados SA de CV, which charged $2,386,832 pesos plus VAT.
This firm was exposed by Groupo Reforma on June 19, 2017, because, together with Grupo IUSA, they pretended to be competitors of another company seeking to win tenders, when in fact both companies were connected because they shared the same address in Mexico City and the businessmen who headed them, Carlos Peralta Quintero and Andrés Tort Rivera, respectively, were brothers-in-law.
Despite spending more than $2 million pesos by the Vallarta City Council, the work did not materialize presumably due to a lack of private investors; and the former Mayor Dávalos ended his term with the election of Luis Alberto Michel Rodríguez.
“That project was left there (in the City Hall) in strategic projects (…). Of course, it was viable,” said Dávalos.
When requesting a comment on the cable car project, the current government only said the issue was from the past administration.
