Mexico’s president-elect announces plans for three new passenger rail lines

The Yucatan Peninsula’s Maya Train, shown at its  Chichén-Itzá station, will provide a model for the mix of military and corporate development for three new passenger lines to be built by the government of Mexico’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum.  Tren Maya

MEXICO CITY — Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday announced plans for developing three new passenger rail lines under her administration, building on a commitment earlier this week to extend one of the signature policies of her predecessor and mentor, current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“We have made the decision to continue building trains,” Sheinbaum said during a Monday press conference, according to a report in the newspaper Proceso. “Now we are going to go north.” The goal is to build some 3,500 kilometers (almost 2,200 miles) of new passenger lines, she said.

On Monday, Sheinbaum said a Mexico City-Nuevo Laredo route would be one of the new lines. Wednesday, she identified two more: a Mexico City-Querétaro-Guadalajara route, and a route from Pachuca to Felipe Angeles International Airport, or AIFA, north of Mexico City. Those lines would range in length from 150 kilometers (93 miles) for the Pachuca-AIFA route to 581 kilometers (361 miles) for Mexico City-Guadalajara and 1,143 kilometers (710 miles) for the line to Nuevo Laredo, just across the border from Laredo, Texas.

On both Monday and Wednesday, Sheinbaum said the new projects would follow the model established by the controversial Maya Train project, with a mix of military and corporate participation.

“One part would be [with] military engineers, who always help us a lot,” she said Wednesday, “and on the other hand, [there will be] bidding for companies to participate.”

She also indicated her plan would do away with the previous proposal by López Obrador that the companies holding the freight concessions on a desired passenger route would also be responsible for passenger service. All three routes announced by Sheinbaum were among the seven included in López Obrador’s plan last year [see “Mexican government seeks passenger service …,” Trains News Wire, Nov. 21, 2023].

“We have to come to an agreement with the concessionaires,” Sheinbaum said, according to El Economista, “because the idea is that they keep their cargo concession, but … we can make passenger trains on the same right-of-way.” Alternately, she said, new right-of-ways could be built for the passenger service.

Sheinbaum said analysis of the projects is already under way so that the projects can be put out to tender quickly after her Oct. 1 inauguration. The aim is to begin construction in 2025, with the two longer routes likely to take four to five years to build. Agence France-Presse reports that plans are for the new lines to be electrified with top speeds of 160 kilometers per hour (99 mph), with the equipment to be built in Mexico. Alstom, Spain’s CAF, and China’s CRRC all have plants in Mexico