MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s president on Friday opened the first part of his administration’s pet project, a tourist train running a bumpy loop around the Yucatán Peninsula.
The $20 billion line, 950 miles long, It’s called the Mayan train, It aims to connect beach resorts and archaeological sites. However, it’s not over yet. Officials pledged that the rest of the line would be ready by the end of February.
president Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador A 290-mile (473-kilometer) route opened Friday between the Gulf Coast city of Campeche and the Caribbean resort of Cancun. This represents about a third of the entire project, and covers the least controversial part.
Traveling from Campeche to Cancun will take about 5 and a half hours at an average speed of about 50 mph (80 km/h), although officials have promised that the train will be able to reach speeds of up to 75 mph (120 km/h). the hour). .
There will be two trains daily in each direction, with stops in the colonial city of Mérida, the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza and about a dozen other towns. Originally, officials were planning to charge separate, lower fares to Mexicans on the line, and foreign tourists would pay a higher fare.
But the only prices listed for the first tours were differentiated only by first-class and “economy class” tickets, which were on sale from Saturday, although most were sold out.
A first-class ticket on one of two trains from Cancun to Merida each day costs $68. A first class bus ticket on the same route costs around $58, with buses departing approximately every half hour.
The first train cars that set off on Friday were reserved for officials, dignitaries and the press. Lopez Obrador described it as a record-breaking project that will eventually connect Cancun with beach towns such as Playa del Carmen and Tulum, and the Mayan ruins of Calakmul and Palenque.
“There are no public works projects like this in the world,” Lopez Obrador said. “It was also done in record time.”
“The entire peninsula erupts in cries of ‘Hallelujah!'” Leida Sansouris, governor of Campeche state, claimed.
Unlike the remaining two-thirds of the Maya Train, the section of line that opened on Friday already had an old train line running much of the route. Many of the unfinished sections were cut through the forest and built over sensitive cave systems filled with relics, sparking objections from environmentalists.
Lopez Obrador rushed to finish the Maya train project before he left office in September, overcoming objections from ecologists, cave divers and archaeologists. The train runs along the Caribbean coast and It threatens extensive caves Where some of the oldest human remains have been discovered in North America.
Lopez Obrador tried to rush through Maya train project By exempting them from normal permits, public reporting, and environmental impact statements, claiming they are vital to national security.
In November 2021, López Obrador’s government issued a wide-ranging decree requiring all federal agencies to grant automatic approval to any public works project that the government considers “in the national interest” or “involving national security.”
The train was partly built by the Mexican military and will be operated by the armed forces, to whom Lopez Obrador has entrusted more projects than any other president in at least a century.
López Obrador is known for his fascination with trains, the armed forces, and state-owned enterprises in general. In November, he announced that he would order private railway companies that transport mostly freight To provide passenger service Or ask the government to schedule its own trains on its routes.
There is almost no longer regular passenger rail service in Mexico after a 1995 reform that gave franchises to two private railway companies: Mexico’s Ferromex and a subsidiary of the American railway company Kansas City Southern.
A few tourist trains operate on relatively short, unconnected routes to tourist attractions such as Copper Canyon in northern Mexico and the western tequila-producing region around Jalisco.
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