If passenger trains share the same tracks as freight railways in Mexico, it will limit the availability of schedules, speeds, and travel times, acknowledged the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications, and Transport (SICT).
“There will be sections where the current train frequency and track conditions are appropriate, and there they could share. It is not healthy for two systems with different speeds to coexist on the track,” said Manuel Gómez Parra, Director General of Rail and Multimodal Development (DGDFM) at SICT.
He mentioned that if these new railway systems are intended to operate at 100 kilometers per hour or above, in many cases, it will be necessary to construct new and specific tracks for passenger movement.
It is worth mentioning that Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) of Mexico indicated last April that there is a possibility that the Mexico-Querétaro train, a project they are currently studying and would be delivering to the federal government in these days, would be operating at a speed of between 100 and 125 kilometers per hour to achieve a two-hour journey or one hour and fifty minutes.
This route is part of the seven routes announced by the federal government last November.
Routes of passenger train projects.
- Train Mexico-Veracruz-Coatzacoalcos
- Interurban Train AIFA-Pachuca
- Train Mexico-Querétaro-León-Aguascalientes
- Train Manzanillo-Colima-Guadalajara-Irapuato
- Mexico-San Luis Potosí-Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo
- Mexico-Querétaro-Guadalajara-Tepic-Mazatlán-Nogales
- Aguascalientes-Chihuahua-Ciudad Juárez
During his participation in the Engineers’ Dialogue, organized by the Mexican Civil Engineers’ College (CICM), he indicated that what the federal government is initially seeking is not to build new railway lines but to use the infrastructure of freight trains. “This can limit the availability of schedules, speeds, and short travel times.”
Parra mentioned that the magic word needed in the country is planning, “we are sometimes under pressure to rush projects, many of them without the necessary planning, we just have to do them; later, with a good project, having those two, surely the works will be completed faster, and there will be cost control.”
He considered that passenger service in the country should be resumed, as the railway will be the transportation method of the future. “We cannot continue building roads or highways by adding lanes, polluting, and above all, harming the environment,” he said.
In this regard, he commented that a “serious” program is needed for the construction of passenger trains, but at the same time, public policies need to be generated so that more freight is prohibited in road transport and shifted to railways.
“In the case of Mexico-Querétaro, the problem I personally see is freight, not so much passengers; it would be a good service and could help with many business issues of commercial exchange. I believe that public policies should be generated so that freight is transferred from road to rail, making our roads safer for people who travel,” he said.
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