Road safety on a tourist corridor
The hotel boulevard
An atlas of six years of traffic crashes on Kukulcán Boulevard: where victims concentrate along 25 km, at what time, who is affected and whether hotels explain the risk.
In one sentenceRanks the boulevard's segments by victims: five 500 m segments account for 32% of them.
Spanish original: El bulevar de los hoteles
How safe is the destination's main street?
Kukulcán Boulevard is both the main street of the tourist destination and the only road on a 25 km island. Guests, workers, suppliers, motorcycles and public transport share one axis.
This atlas locates, kilometre by kilometre and hour by hour, where crashes concentrate and whom they affect.
Key findings
438 injured and 8 killed
Six years of official records on the boulevard; 29% of crashes had victims.
Five segments, a third of the victims
Five 500 m segments (10% of the boulevard) account for 32% of people injured or killed.
Night injures more
31% of crashes happen at night, and 34% of those have victims, against 27% during the day.
Hotels do not explain the risk
Segments with large hotels record 17.9 victims per km and segments without them 17.6: the risk belongs to the whole corridor.
Approach
Step 1
Reference every official crash to a continuous 25.2 km axis and read it in 500 m segments.
Step 2
Cross time of day with kilometre to isolate night-time risk.
Step 3
Separate pedestrians and motorcyclists as the most exposed groups.
Step 4
Compare segments with and without large hotels instead of assigning each crash to its nearest hotel.
How to read it
- The official crash register may undercount; 2020 reflects the pandemic and 2024 may be incomplete.
- Proximity to a hotel does not imply causation.
- Cause and alcohol codes are not interpreted, for lack of a dictionary in the layer.
Data
Urban traffic crash register (INEGI)
Georeferenced records with class, type, vehicles, victims, hour and day.
Hotels
Accommodation establishments with employment size range.
Boulevard axis
Kukulcán Boulevard as a continuous route.
What supports the method
- Austroads (2018)Improving the whole corridor gives better results than treating isolated sites (p. 14); the design speed where pedestrians are present is 30 km/h (p. 3).
Paraphrased; page numbers refer to the PDF consulted. The library is in Spanish.
What you just saw
Six-year crash profile along 25 km, by segment, hour and type of victim.
What else this method can answer
- Which segment should be treated first?
- Which night-time measures are needed?
- What role do hotel accesses play in the risk?
In other places
Applies to any corridor with georeferenced crash records.
Line of work
C · Road safety: prioritising corridors and crossings →Do you have a similar question in your city?
Describe the problem
Next in Safe streets and riskThe city under the surge