The Los Cabos city council had a full plate at its 27th regular session this week, and two of the items voted through have real, near-term consequences: one for anyone trying to get around San José del Cabo without a car, and one for anyone paying to fly into the country as a foreign visitor.
Council members approved extending Route 6 colectivo service to Montebello, a residential area of San José del Cabo that has been asking for better public transit access for a while. The same vote also instructed officials to continue a broader review of fares across the municipality’s urban, suburban and colectivo transit systems — a study that, if it goes anywhere, could eventually mean changes to what riders pay on other routes too. For now, the concrete change is simple: Montebello gets added to the Route 6 map, giving residents there a transit connection they previously lacked.
It is the kind of incremental fix that rarely makes headlines but matters on the ground, especially in neighborhoods where a bus stop can be the difference between a job commute that works and one that doesn’t. Los Cabos has been chipping away at its transit network piece by piece this year, including sidewalk repairs at bus stops along existing routes, so the Montebello extension fits a pattern rather than standing alone.
The Non-Resident Fee Fight Continues
The second major item was less about buses and more about Mexico City politics. The council voted to formally ask the Chamber of Deputies and, where applicable, the Senate to take another look at a proposed increase to the Derecho de No Residente — the federal non-resident fee charged to foreign visitors, typically folded into the cost of an international airline ticket — as part of the 2027 federal budget package currently under review.
The request specifically asks lawmakers to technically assess what a higher fee could do to tourist demand, air connectivity and the competitiveness of Mexico’s international destinations, Los Cabos among them. It is not an outright rejection of the fee itself, but it is a clear signal that the municipality wants the increase softened or at least studied more carefully before it lands on travelers’ ticket prices.
This is not the first time Los Cabos has weighed in on the issue. Local business groups have gone further, calling for the increase to be frozen entirely. The worry on the ground is straightforward: Los Cabos competes for long-haul flights against destinations in the Caribbean and Central America, and even a modest bump in entry costs can factor into where an airline decides to add seats. The broader public debate over the fee has also drawn pushback from tourism-dependent regions nationwide, not just Baja California Sur.
The same session also advanced plans for a Municipal Mental Health Center, with council members approving the roadmap for an executive project to be folded into 2027 budget planning — a reminder that council agendas rarely deal in just one subject at a time. But for anyone budgeting a flight south or waiting on a bus in San José del Cabo, the transit and tourism-fee items are the ones worth watching.
Neither decision changes anything immediately. The Route 6 extension still needs to be scheduled and rolled out by the transit operator, and the fee request now heads to federal lawmakers who are under no obligation to act on it before the 2027 budget package is finalized, likely toward the end of this year or early next. Travelers planning international flights into Los Cabos should expect the current fee structure to hold for now, with any change tied to how Congress handles the broader budget debate.
