The Mexico City government will allocate 18.1 billion pesos (US $908.1 million) in 2019 to public works projects, the government said yesterday.
Construction work on two bridges, two hospitals and two massive bicycle parking stations will start or continue next year and an extension of one line of the Metrobús system will be completed.
Speaking at a press conference alongside Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, Public Works Secretary Jesús Antonio Esteva said the government will focus on improving existing public infrastructure and building new public works projects.
It will also aim to make the capital’s public transportation more sustainable and improve the delivery of city services.
One of the new bridges, Esteva said, will be built in the borough of Venustiano Carranza near the Mexico City airport.
The government will initially invest 270 million pesos ($13.5 million) in the project although its final cost is expected to be 900 million pesos ($45.1 million).
The other bridge will be built in front of the Central de Abasto – Mexico City’s huge wholesale market – in the sprawling eastern borough of Iztapalapa. The initial investment will be 180 million pesos (US $9 million).
The Cuajimalpa hospital, one of five large infrastructure projects that the last government left unfinished, will be allocated 350 million pesos ($17.5 million) for work to continue while that in Topilejo, in the southern borough of Tlalpan, will be expanded with a 150-million-peso ($7.5 million) investment.
Eleven health care centers will also be upgraded with an investment of 80 million pesos ($4 million).
A 20-kilometer extension to Line 5 of the Metrobús system is expected to be completed early next year while stations on two other lines will be upgraded.
Mayor Sheinbaum said last month that the same system, which this year began operating London-style red double-decker buses on one if its seven lines, would get 1 billion pesos ($50 million) to build two additional lines as part of a 10.2-billion-peso ($511.1-million) investment in public transportation.
One of the new bicycle parking stations will be built at the Tláhuac subway station, located on Line 12, and the other will be at the Rosario station, where Lines 6 and 7 meet in the northwest of Mexico City. Together they will cost 50 million pesos ($2.5 million).
The leftist Morena party government will also spend 10 million pesos to build two new higher education campuses, 50 million to renovate the run-down Cosmos Cinema, 150 million to complete construction of the Iztapalapa Interactive Children’s Museum and 200 million to upgrade the Santa Martha Social Rehabilitation Center.
Funding for the Secretariat of Public Works will increase by 52% next year compared to this year.
When she took office on December 5, Sheinbaum, like her political ally President López Obrador, pledged that her government will not fail.
Source: Milenio (sp)
