“We are going to transform a Metro from 50 years ago into a Metro of the future”. Claudia Sheinbaum, 22.1.2021
The Head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaumwas in Morelia, Michoacán, this January 7 for a campaign event in which he would give a “master conference” entitled “Successful government policies”, when a new tragedy occurred in the capital’s Metro. The Collective Transport System itself Subway described her as a simple “incident“, but a woman lost her life and 75 people were transferred to hospitals for injuries.
The Metro have become an irritating stone in the shoe for Sheinbaum in his campaign for the Presidency. Just this past December 19 he declared: “I want to say that he Subwaymore than problems, he has had a campaign against which, for me, is a campaign against his workers”.
It has apparently been a very tough and effective campaign. Barely On May 3, 2021, a segment of the elevated part of Line 12 collapsed with a balance of 27 deaths. The head of government hired a Norwegian company, DNVto make an expert opinion “impartial“, but later He fired her because he didn’t like the study, which pointed out maintenance and not just construction problems.
These have not been the only incidents in this campaign. Just on January 1 of this 2023 The Broken Chair reported, with information from the Metro itself, that, in the four years of government of sheinbaum, from 2019 to 2022, 431 accidents were registered against 181 in the previous four, 2015-2018. Yes, the number of accidents in the first four years of sheinbaum was 2.3 times higher than the last four of Miguel Angel Mancera.
Money is not everything, of course, but it can be indicative of the causes of the problem. In 2018, last of mancera, a budget for the Metro of 22.822 million pesos was approved; by 2023 the figure has dropped to 18,848 million pesos (figures collected from official sources by @juan_ortizmx). It is a reduction of 17.4 percent, without considering inflation or the fact that a good part of the budget is being used for the reconstruction of the line 12 and the remodeling of the line 1. To this we must add that there has been an under-exercise of what was budgeted.
When mancera raised the rate from three to five pesos in December 2013, almost 10 years ago, the groups that are in power today severely questioned it. Years later, on May 16, 2018, in the middle of the Sheinbaum campaign, the current mobility secretary, Andrés Lajous, commented on Twitter: “We are going to go ‘from occurrences to capacity’ or rather ‘from Mancera to Sheinbaum'”.
The opposite has happened. I understand that it is politically difficult to raise the rate of the Subway, but if it is not increased in a decade, the subsidy must be raised. The idea that 10 years later you can do with less is a simple occurrence. maybe sheinbaum should be uploaded more often Subwaybut not followed by officials and photographers, but to verify the deterioration of the facilities or to see the posters of the workers who protest because they do not have the tools for their work.
For the rulers, unfortunately, everything is politics. On Saturday, the capital’s officials gave instructions to their armies in social media on how to respond to “incidentand defend sheinbaum. The head of government herself, who flew to the Mexico City in a helicopter “facilitated“by the morenista governor of Michoacandedicated himself to taking photos with the victims and in the C5, to show he was in charge, but with a human touch. It’s sad when politics becomes promotional photos, and successful government strategies mere occurrences.
Airline. The government will spend 816.8 million pesos in buying the brand and waste of an airline bankrupt 22 years ago to enter the hazardous business of commercial aviation. No wonder there is no money for medicines or the Subway.
#meter #problem