The federal government will invest in urban improvement projects in five Quintana Roo municipalities through which the Maya Train railroad will run, President López Obrador announced Sunday.
Speaking at an event in Playa del Carmen, López Obrador said that funds will be allocated for projects in that city as well as Cancún, Felipe Carillo Puerto, Bacalar and Chetumal.
“There will be investment … in these population centers, in these cities where the Maya Train stations will be,” he said without revealing how much money the government intended to spend or the exact nature of the projects.
He did say that the projects would help to reduce contrasts between tourist zones with five-star hotels and “marginalized neighborhoods without services and with constant growth.”
The president reiterated that construction of the railroad between Cancún and Tulum and the upgrading of the highway between the same two cities will take about two years.
“I’m asking for the understanding … of residents of this municipality of Solidaridad [Playa del Carmen]. We’re going to work quickly but it’s going to take us two years in any case. [The railroad] will be built along the route of the current highway,” López Obrador said.
He said that the highway and rail projects will cause some inconveniences but that the region will subsequently benefit from the modern thoroughfares.
The US $8-billion Maya Train project, which will run through five states in the country’s southeast, is scheduled to begin operations in 2023.
The president also predicted that the tourist industry will almost fully recover from the coronavirus by the end of the year. “I predict that by the end of the year we shall almost be in the same situation we were in before Covid in Quintana Roo …”
López Obrador’s announcement that the federal government will allocate additional resources for urban improvement projects in Quintana Roo came 10 days after he revealed that an airport would be built in Tulum. He said last week that the army will build the facility and that it will open in 2023.
Late last month, federal Finance Minister Arturo Herrera visited Quintana Roo and announced more than 2.2 billion pesos (US $103.7 million) in funding for projects in the Caribbean coast state.
The lion’s share of the funding – some 2 billion pesos – will go to the construction of a bridge over Nichupté Lagoon in the Cancún hotel zone while 203 million pesos is to be allocated to the city’s Parque de la Equidad (Equity Park) project.
An additional 70 million pesos in federal funds has been earmarked for water projects in Benito Juárez, the municipality where Cancún is located, and Isla Mujeres, another Quintana Roo municipality that includes the holiday island of the same name.
