Mexico City.- Mexico plans to expand its passenger rail network northward with new lines connecting Mexico City to the U.S. border and Guadalajara, the country’s second-largest city.
Future president Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that three new rail lines are planned that, in principle, will take advantage of the current right-of-way for freight trains with the aim of building parallel tracks for electric passenger trains that can travel at a speed of up to 160 kilometers per hour and that would presumably run confined, that is, between walls.
“Our goal is trains similar to the Maya Train to the north,” Sheinbaum said.
An initial estimate of the costs is 26 billion dollars, a figure that seems small if one takes into account that the Maya Train, Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s flagship mega-project that is still unfinished and with more than 1,500 kilometers, has already required an investment of more than 30 billion dollars.
Hours before Sheinbaum’s comments, the current president announced his successor’s plans and said that during the next six-year term, 3,000 km of passenger trains would be built, double the number he had planned during his term.
One of the lines will go from Mexico City to Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Monterrey —the industrial capital of Mexico— and end in Nuevo Laredo, a city on the border with Texas, a journey of more than 1,100 kilometers.
According to Sheinbaum, another line would go from Querétaro to Guanajuato until reaching Guadalajara and, potentially, could be extended along the Pacific coast to Nogales, on the border with Arizona, although Sheinbaum considered that it is possible that this second section cannot be developed during her administration that will begin on October 1 and end in 2030.
López Obrador, however, was more ambitious in his plans and spoke of even going beyond Nogales to Mexicali and Tijuana, border cities with California, and of another line that would connect Mexico City with Ciudad Juárez, neighboring El Paso, Texas, routes about which his successor did not comment.
The third line that Sheinbaum did mention would extend the section currently under construction to connect the capital with the Felipe Ángeles airport until reaching Pachuca, 90 kilometers north of Mexico City.
Sheinbaum explained that she is analyzing the right-of-way status of all the new sections to be built in order to negotiate with the current concessionaires, who would maintain their cargo services, and to be able to carry out the tenders for the new works as soon as her government begins.
“The goal is to connect our country by maintaining freight trains, which have enormous potential… and what that means is the creation of jobs linked to public works that boost private investment,” said the future president.
Sheinbaum had already announced that the Armed Forces will continue to be involved in the development of all these projects and that her goal is to have the new trains built in Mexico as well.
“It would be the same way the Maya Train was built, partly with military engineers and partly with companies,” he said on Monday.
The Maya Train, which will connect tourist sites on the Yucatan Peninsula, the unfinished megaproject in the southeast of the country, was heavily criticized for its major environmental impact and uncertain economic profitability.
The cost of that and other railways has led the López Obrador administration to register a budget deficit of almost 6% of the Gross Domestic Product.
Other passenger trains of the current administration whose construction has not yet been completed are the one that connects the center of the capital with the most recent airport and the one that links Mexico City with Toluca, to the west.
The Mexican Railway Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The population’s interest in the future railway network is difficult to predict. Sheinbaum said that studies are being carried out to find out which sections are most in demand by citizens, including the connections between the capital and Querétaro and Guadalajara.
López Obrador insisted on the benefits of all this railway reactivation. “What is this going to mean?” he asked. “Work, a lot of work.”
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