The Mayan tourist train will be finished on schedule in December, the federal government maintains, although President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador confirmed this week that it is unlikely to be fully operational at this time.
A fine-tuning period of up to eight months to smooth out kinks in the network before transporting passengers will begin once the construction work has been completed by the end of the year, he said last weekend,
The president was speaking during a junket to which he invited around 100 guests to accompany him on the first “public” run of the train, covering 1,000 kilometers over two days along several stages of the 1,425-kilometer route around the Yucatan peninsula.
Video clips released by the president’s office showed Lopez Obrador at the controls of the train, intermingling with his invitees, greeting staff at the stations, and waving to people standing beside the track watching the train pass by.
Among the passengers was a beaming Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro, who seems to have mended fences with AMLO after they shared a prickly relationship in the first years of their respective terms.
Please login or subscribe to view the complete article.