This sums up some days in my life

Go ahead, click the image. No, the words aren't in English. Relax, there's a translation here.

To put it in context, it came from this online newspaper from Peru. The article is entitled "Faucett Freeway or Crucifixion Way?"

How the hell did I land on this page? I was watching a show from the National Geographic channel - Locked up Abroad: Peru. I saw a road sign in a scene from the show and it occurred to me - that's a freeway in Lima. It's gotta be a toll road. In a lot of countries roads would not get built were it not for the existing right of way being ceded to a private company or a new government agency.

Where there are toll roads, there are scandals. The one in Illinois immediately comes to mind.

Yes, it's wikipedia, banned in many school districts as a source of information. However I have to point out that their reporting standards are as good as or better than those of Fox News!

I have special memories of the IL toll road - at one point in time I thought I'd gotten the biggest speeding ticket I would EVER receive along that highway. (I was wrong) A very close relative made a game for years of beating the tolls, (allegedly) skating through suddenly behind someone who'd thrown their coins in the basket but before the gate closed, they had it timed that well. There were lights and buzzers but no cameras. At rush hour the cops were busy with other stuff... so what's a few pennies missing? There were toll highway authority executives with reputations for paying off personal debts with change. Hm... Oh and when the roads were built in the 50's, the tolls were supposed to end in 2000. Nope.

Speaking of pennies it remains the only toll road in the USA that still accepts pennies as cash payment. In my younger years I'd accumulate pennies in plastic baggies that had perhaps seen some other previous use. The tolls were 40c, three times going downtown Chicago and three times going back. It took quite a bit of effort to empty out those baggies but with some help from my friends we did it. There was no shortage of them. Sometimes we'd miscount either 39c or 41c into a freshly-emptied baggie - the closer to the time the baggie got recycled, the more likely a discrepancy was to happen. What can I say... We fed lots of funny smelling (especially to a trained dog) coins into the baskets and allegedly weaved off along our merry way to go party.

Anyway this private Peruvian corporation - whose owners were no doubt great friends with those in power at the time - have created this public work that's a route to their airport. This road in the picture spans only 1 1/2 km. That's .93 miles - not much. To travel those .93 miles they charge anywhere from 33c to 49c each way. For a bit less than a mile that's steep even by USA standards - but now consider that a semi-skilled peruvian laborer might take home US$330.00 per month - assuming his job is legally registered with the government. It's a huge toll.

To pay lip-service to the idea of how insanely expensive this road is for the average person, they provided "free" traffic lanes on either side of the highway. However, the architecture of the whole thing STRONGLY pushes the user to pay this big price.

Yes, now I am finally arriving at the translation for the captions in the picture.
From top to bottom:
Caption: Too many obstacles in a kilometer and a half - the Faucett expressway seen via satellite.
Immediately below that they show the legend (referencias).
Puente peatonal = Pedestrian bridge
Rompemuelles = speed bump. In Mexican Spanish this is called a "tope"
Semaforo = Traffic light.
First picture with the red car going over the speedbump: Too many speedbumps... and stoplights. The alternate free route that goes from Morales Duarez (it's the bridge over the river at the lower right side of the picture) has 14. Why so many?
Off to the left below that the caption is:
Unsafe pedestrian bridges. A pedestrian has to descend on the side of the freeway and cross the "free" street to get to the opposite side.
Across from there it shows a picture of a bus on the freeway. The caption says "Empty freeway. The "free" route is jammed. The toll scares off all the traffic.
Lastly, showing the tollbooth where the drivers are being relieved of their Sols (Peruvian currency) - "The most expensive tollbooth in Peru for such a short trip. A microbus driver that makes 8 trips a day has to pay 16 Sols (US$5.32!) daily."