CHETUMAL, Mexico — Saying that “only in Mexico can you build a train of more than 1,500 kilometers … in just four years,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Saturday and Sunday marked the opening of the final section of the Maya Train project on the Yucatan Peninsula, as well as the first anniversary of the opening of the system’s first segment.
The looping 1,554-kilometer (966-mile) route connecting the tourism center of Cancún with archaeological sites around the peninsula was a focal point of the administration of Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had once said it would be completed in February, and then by September, before he left office. Sheinbaum said it will be “one of the great legacies” of López Obrador, news site Cronica reports, and that “the Maya Train tells the world that Mexico is a great nation, that every day it does feats, that it gives us strength, and that Mexico is respected.” It also is a sign that privatization of Mexico’s railroads was one of the nation’s great mistakes, she said.
Sheinbaum also reiterated plans to develop the route for freight operations, a project she said would begin in October, and said it will be connected to the Interoceanic Train, the newspaper Excelsior reports. That 188-mile route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec connecting the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean is envisioned as a shipping alternative to the Panama Canal; its nearest point, the northern terminus of Coatzacoalcos, is about 300 kilometers (186 miles) from the Maya Train’s southern terminal of Palenque.
The first segment of the Maya Train, 480 kilometers/209 miles between Cancún and Campeche, opened on Dec. 15, 2023 [see “Long delays, late trains mark start …,” Trains News Wire, Dec. 17, 2023]. López-Dóriga Digital reports that in the first year, according to the train’s military operators, the system transported 603,182 customers — roughly 20% of the goal of 3 million passengers per year. Of those, 33,547 were foreign tourists, 281,593 were Mexican tourists, 1691,01 were locals and 120,141 were those who received discounts as senior citizens, students, teachers, and persons with disabilities. It cost about 500 billion pesos (about $25 billion), the website reports, against an original projection of 140 billion pesos ($7 billion).
