An eight-year-old girl died on July 1 after being struck by a Jeep Wrangler on Boulevard Cucapah in Tijuana’s Colonia Buenos Aires Sur. María Belén had just stepped off a public minibus, known locally as a calafia, when the driver of a trailing vehicle overtook the stopped bus and hit her. The Tijuana calafia accident has reignited a long-running debate over the city’s lack of designated bus stops, especially in eastern and peripheral neighborhoods where informal stopping practices force passengers into traffic.
Governor Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda said on July 3 that she had contacted the state attorney general for case details. She also pledged financial support to the girl’s mother, Gladys Jazmín López Hernández, a 23-year-old who had arrived in Tijuana only months earlier and has no family in the city. López Hernández had launched a public collection to cover funeral costs.
“We are going to find her. We are going to support her,” Ávila Olmeda told reporters after an event in Tecate. “I understand she was going through a critical moment yesterday, so we also need to give her that space. But she will have all of our support.”
No Designated Stop Existed on Boulevard Cucapah
The collision happened near the intersection of Boulevard Cucapah and Calle Paralelo 28. Because no official bus stop exists on that stretch of road, the calafia driver pulled over where he could. Parked cars occupied the curb lane, so the minibus halted in the second lane, blocking the flow of traffic behind it. María Belén stepped off and tried to cross toward the sidewalk. The driver of a Jeep Wrangler behind the bus swerved around it and struck the child.
Calafias are privately operated minibuses that serve as the backbone of Tijuana’s public transit system. They carry hundreds of thousands of riders daily across a sprawling metro area of roughly two million people. But the system has long operated with minimal infrastructure. Many routes lack marked stops, sheltered waiting areas, or pull-off bays that would allow buses to exit the traffic lane safely. Drivers stop wherever passengers flag them down, often in the middle of busy arterials.
The problem is most acute in Tijuana’s eastern periphery and hillside colonias, where rapid residential growth has outpaced road infrastructure. Streets like Boulevard Cucapah carry heavy vehicle traffic at high speeds, yet lack the curb cuts, signage, and designated bays that would separate boarding passengers from moving cars. Community members pointed out after María Belén’s death that the city has few safe paraderos (bus stops) in this part of town.
IMOS Tasked With Joint Review of Road Conditions
Ávila Olmeda said her administration would work with the Tijuana municipal government and IMOS, the state’s Sustainable Mobility Institute, to review “any urbanization conditions in that zone” to prevent a repeat incident. IMOS, created under Baja California’s 2019 mobility law, is responsible for planning safer transit infrastructure across the state. The institute has previously identified unregulated calafia stops as a risk factor in pedestrian injuries.
José Alejandro Avilés Amezcua, Tijuana’s municipal public safety chief, first briefed the governor on the case during a morning security meeting. The governor’s response marks the first time state leadership has publicly connected a specific fatality to the broader infrastructure gap around calafia routes.
Tijuana recorded 237 pedestrian deaths in traffic incidents during 2024, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). That figure placed the city among the highest in Mexico on a per-capita basis. While not all of those deaths involved public transit, road safety advocates have argued for years that unregulated stops on high-speed corridors are a consistent factor. Boulevard Cucapah, a four-lane artery running through the city’s southeastern residential belt, sees daily traffic volumes that include commercial trucks, commuter vehicles, and calafias sharing lanes without separation.
The stretch where María Belén was killed is used by residents of several surrounding colonias, including Buenos Aires Sur and Buenos Aires Norte, to access schools, markets, and connections to the city center. Riders who board or exit calafias on this boulevard must cross active traffic lanes because no median refuge islands or crosswalks exist at most informal stops.
The governor did not announce a timeline for the IMOS review or specify what infrastructure changes might follow. The state attorney general’s office has not publicly confirmed whether the Jeep driver faces charges. López Hernández’s fundraising effort remains active as of July 3. The original report was published by Punto Norte.