President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has taken the first steps to bring passenger trains back to Mexico’s railroads.
This week, he announced that he is preparing a presidential decree that would oblige the country’s two freight train operators to resume passenger service.
Mexico’s passenger train network was phased out in the late 1980s and early 1990s when bus and air travel became the favored way of getting around the country. Only a few “tourist lines” such as the Copper Canyon and Tequila Express routes have continued to operate.
López Obrador has always been a firm champion of train travel. The Mayan tourist train route, which covers 1,525 kilometers of the Yucatan Peninsula, will be finished next month and is the most high-profile infrastructure project of his presidency. As well as transporting tourists around the region, it will also serve as a passenger train service for locals.
And the first stage of the Mexico City-Toluca high-speed train line, which has taken almost a decade to complete, was finally inaugurated in September of this year after the federal government took over responsibility for the project.
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