THE RETURN OF THE PASSENGER TRAIN

The railroad continues to be a widely used mode of transportation in foreign trade, especially in intermodal transportation, doing a perfect job with road transportation; however, the passenger train lost popularity.

During the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican railroads suffered great deterioration and in 1937, President Lazaro Cardenas decided to expropriate and nationalize them. It was not until 1995, when President Ernesto Zedillo privatized Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México, and in 2001 the disappearance of the organization was announced, and therefore, our country was left without passenger rail transportation.

Since then, the passenger train in Mexico is no longer considered a means of transportation for travelers since it has no routes. Today, there are very few passenger train routes left that you could travel on and you can't miss them:‍

1. Chepe: The most popular, this route takes you from Los Mochis, Sinaloa to Chihuahua, Chihuahua.‍

2. Jose Cuervo Express: A very short route, with an approximate duration of 1 hour takes you from Guadalajara, Jalisco to Tequila, Jalisco.‍

3. Cholula: This route connects you from the city of Puebla to the magical town of Cholula. The duration of the trip is 40 minutes.‍

4. Tijuana-Tecate Tourist Train: One of the few passenger trains in Mexico, but not to be missed. It connects the points of Tijuana - Tecate in a trip of approximately two and a half hours.‍

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The passenger train returns.‍

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The Mexican Government has announced in a decree in the Official Gazette of the Federation, to revitalize its passenger rail system, establishing it as a priority area for the country's development.

Last January, the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation received 5 proposals from different companies interested in the passenger train project. The federal agencies in charge are analyzing the viability of the proposed routes and the costs of the necessary investment, to be able to respond to the participants; such results are expected to be ready in a period of 12 to 18 months.

These are the 7 routes proposed in the projects submitted for review on January 15:

1. México - Veracruz - Coatzacoalcos

2. AIFA - Pachuca

3. México - Querétaro - León - Aguascalientes

4. Manzanillo - Colima - Guadalajara - Irapuato

5. México San Luis Potosí - Monterrey - Nuevo Laredo

6. México - Querétaro - Guadalajara - Tepic - Mazatlán - Nogales

7. Aguascalientes - Chihuahua - Ciudad Juárez
   

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What are the participants looking for?

With great interest and enthusiasm, companies have joined to re-enable the routes for passenger rail transportation and have launched their proposals, however, they are waiting for financial support from the government.

The more companies that want to join the return of the passenger train and the more route proposals there are, the less economic support and subsidies the government will provide to these projects.

Taking as a reference the cost of the infrastructure of the Mayan Train, "the cost of the rehabilitation of the infrastructure would be 333 million pesos per kilometer, with this estimation for the new projects it would be a third part, that is, 100 million pesos per km, it would be approximately 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) close to 1.2 billion pesos", comments Evangelina del Toro in T21. (Del Toro, E., 2024, para.9).‍

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How will it impact logistics?‍

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Another of the variables that must be studied in the projects presented regarding passenger rail routes is that they do not affect the current flow and transit of goods traveling by train.

Currently, among the proposed routes, there are some very busy stretches for transporting goods, especially those related to the automotive sector. Did you know that 42% of gasoline engines and 11% of other automotive components are transported by rail? By increasing traffic on these routes, the automotive sector's costs would increase due to the risks that rail transport may face when increasing its routes for travelers.

One of the alternatives would be to migrate such operations to road transport, however, this would highly increase logistics costs, not to mention the current shortage of truck drivers.

There are great challenges ahead for the railroad industry in our country, however, there is no doubt that the return of the passenger train will help the country's economic development, and with the support of the Public-Private sector, great results will be achieved, benefiting Mexico's economy and transportation.