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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s large, debt-fueled passenger rail constructing program will not be going to finish with the administration of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, however will as a substitute double, he mentioned Wednesday.
López Obrador mentioned his successor, president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, is planning to construct three passenger prepare traces working from the capital to some cities on the U.S. border. López Obrador and Sheinbaum agree she is going to construct about 1,850 miles (3,000 kilometers) of passenger rail, double the quantity he constructed.
Sheinbaum mentioned the trains can be electrical and would run at speeds of as much as 100 mph (160 kph). Virtually all of Mexico’s present freight trains run on diesel.
Sheinbaum mentioned she was planning to construct a passenger line from Mexico Metropolis to the border metropolis of Nuevo Laredo — throughout the border from Laredo, Texas — a distance of about 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) at a value of about $22 billion. Nonetheless, the price of most up-to-date railway tasks in Mexico have ballooned far above preliminary estimates.
Sheinbaum mentioned she was additionally planning a prepare line from Mexico Metropolis to the western metropolis of Guadalajara, for about one other $3 billion, and mentioned that rail line may very well be prolonged to frame cities like Nogales, throughout from Nogales, Arizona, or different border cities additional west if there was time in her six-year time period.
Sheinbaum’s plan will contain military engineers directing personal contractors to construct passenger traces alongside the identical rights-of means at the moment utilized by personal concessionary operators to maneuver freight.
That might contain transferring the prevailing rail traces to make means for the brand new tracks, which could imply some disruptions to present freight service if present traces must be moved.
López Obrador had beforehand demanded that freight line operators provide passenger service as effectively, however that plan has apparently been shelved.
López Obrador additionally acknowledged there may very well be massive prices related to confining the anticipated high-speed rail traces with partitions or fences, and prices related to recovering rights-of-way which have been invaded by squatters.
Present personal concessionary rail operators mentioned that they had no instant touch upon the plans, or didn’t reply to requests for remark.
López Obrador mentioned the mission is anticipated to be almost double the scale of his personal railway constructing packages, which included the $30 billion Maya tourist train on the Yucatan Peninsula, a railway throughout the Isthmus of Tehuantepec linking the Pacific and Gulf coasts, and a commuter railway linking Mexico Metropolis to the close by metropolis of Toluca.
The price of these railways has led López Obrador’s administration to publish a budget deficit of nearly 6% of GDP this yr, whereas specialists query how a lot the trains will truly be utilized in a rustic the place most vacationers at the moment use automobiles, buses or airways to cowl the hundreds of miles the routes contain.
Observers say one of many key issues is that López Obrador’s rail traces — and apparently Sheinbaum’s as effectively — have been deliberate with a “construct it and they’re going to come” angle, with little actual effort to establish whether or not there may be sufficient demand to justify passenger service to far-flung border cities.
There’s little passenger rail infrastructure in U.S. border cities to offer connections for any Mexican rail traces that is likely to be constructed.
López Obrador and Sheinbaum each belong to the Morena occasion, and Sheinbaum was elected on a pledge to continue or expand all of López Obrador’s policies.
The outgoing president has at all times mentioned he regrets Mexico’s determination handy over the poorly-run nationwide railways to non-public operators within the Nineteen Nineties, once they largely dropped unprofitable passenger providers.
However he additionally sees constructing rail traces as a method to create jobs and stimulate home progress.
“What does this imply?” López Obrador mentioned. “Jobs, a number of jobs.”
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Observe AP’s protection of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
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