Some things "smell kind of fishy" in the administration of Jorge Astiazaran, and one of them is the National Competitive Bidding No. SITT-LP-001-16 for the hiring of rate collection services and fleet management of the subsystem 1 "Corredor Puerta Mexico – Florido" for mass transit in the municipality of Tijuana, Baja California, for which the Procurement Committee of the Municipal Agency for the Operation of the Urban Mass Passenger Transportation System of Tijuana which summoned corporations to participate for the award of a contract for a 30-year term for the design, implementation, operation and maintenance of technological services in the subsystem 1 public transport service, through the use and implementation of a contactless smart card (TISC for its acronym in Spanish) and money cash.

We say that something "smells fishy" either because despite the complexity of the matter being tendered, only four days, from the last day of sale of bases, were given for the submission and opening of proposals, and only 24 hours for the issuance of the contract award, yes, only 24 hours for technical and economic analysis of the proposals for the award of a contract for 30 years.

One of the bidders asked the Procurement Committee to move the deadline from August 17 to two weeks later in order to submit proposals, and broaden the evaluation of proposals for at least a week, as a single day is considered to be little to no time to get the best choice, if application is denied the bidder requested the Procurement Committee to clarify the socioeconomic impact and cost benefit of waiting or not for the appointed time. Indeed, the applications were rejected and clarifications obviated.

Another irregularities surrounding the SITT is the acquisition of the 969 traffic lights – both pedestrian and vehicle in nature – and installed in Coahuila, Revolution, 9th and 10th streets of the downtown area as part of the Integrated Mobility System, which were subject of a cost of 103'927,149.21 million MXN pesos, and that were purchased from the company Semaforos Mexicanos (Semex for its acronym in Spanish), considered one of the most corrupt companies in the country, due to the fishy mechanisms through which it awards itself with municipal and state contracts. 969 traffic lights were actually necessary? Are they being properly distributed? Is the traffic light pole configuration the right one? Was it really necessary to mount together up to three traffic lights along a single bracket? Anyway … judge for yourself.

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