The Railway Transport Regulatory Agency (ARTF) is working with the Secretariat of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (Sedatu) to determine the status of the right-of-way of the current railway infrastructure in Mexico , in order to be used for passenger trains.
Andrés Lajous Loaeza, head of ARTF, explained in a working meeting with the Communications and Transportation Commission of the Chamber of Deputies that they have carried out reviews, and in general terms there is a lot of land available.
“The objective is not to use the existing roads that are for freight, but to take advantage of the existing right of way in the most efficient way possible. It is nominally 30 meters, but there are places where it reaches 70 meters for historical reasons and there are others where it is from 20 meters to 15 meters. We will make the adjustments to recover that right of way,” he said.
It should be recalled that earlier this month, Oscar Del Cueto, president of CPKC of Mexico , commented that the authority has carried out field studies on its infrastructure, so approximately 200 kilometers could be used for new projects.
“What the Secretariat shared with us, so far, in the Mexico-Querétaro section, 200 kilometers have been identified that would be using part of our right of way, although there is a percentage that are far from our roads, one because of our infrastructure and because they want to make the road more direct, that is, where we have curves, they want to make them more direct and no longer go on the right of way,” he indicated at the time.
The above, he explained, is due to the fact that passenger trains need greater speed , which could not be operated on their track layout.
Andrés Lajous explained that the tracks for passenger service must have a low gradient and very wide curves so that the trains can increase their speed, therefore, adjustments will be made to the new infrastructure that will be within the right of way of the current facilities.
He insisted that they are looking for this new transport to have its own routes so as not to affect cargo handling, which has a different operation, since the service of the first ones is expected to have a speed between 160 and 200 kilometers per hour.
On the other hand, he reiterated that in the next few days work will begin on the first phase of the passenger projects that include AIFA-Pachuca, Mexico-Querétaro, Saltillo-Nuevo Laredo and Querétaro-Irapuato.
He said that they have already made great progress in the demand studies because they began in 2024 and also the environmental studies, and they already have the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Regarding the technical studies, he said that the topography, layout, infrastructure, among others, have already been completed.
Lajous Loaeza met with the Communications and Transportation and Infrastructure committees chaired by deputies Víctor Manuel Pérez Díaz and Roberto Armando Albores Gleason, respectively, with the purpose of announcing the passenger train projects promoted by the federal government.
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