Federal and Nuevo León authorities have reached an agreement with the Mexican subsidiary of Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) to build a suburban passenger railroad in the Monterrey metropolitan area.
The agreement between the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport, the state of Nuevo León and Kansas City Southern de México was outlined in the federal government’s official gazette on Wednesday.
The plan is to build a 75-kilometer railroad between the municipality of García, located west of Monterrey, and Pesquería, situated to the east of the state capital.
The railroad is slated to have 26 stations and run through seven municipalities: García, Santa Catarina (where Tesla’s gigafactory will be located), San Pedro Garza García, Monterrey, San Nicolás de los Garza, Apodaca and Pesquería (where Korean automaker Kia has a plant).
Monterrey already has a metro system – one of three in Mexico, alongside the Mexico City and Guadalajara metros – but it doesn’t reach most of the municipalities listed above.
An initial investment of 26.65 million pesos (US $1.5 million) has been earmarked to complete studies and draw up plans for the suburban rail project. The Tren Suburbano de Monterrey (Monterrey Suburban Train) would run at a maximum speed of 100 kilometers per hour, according to the agreement published Wednesday.
The announcement of the planned project comes three weeks after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador published a decree that established the provision of passenger train services as a priority for national development.
It said that companies that currently have concessions for freight tracks – namely CPKC, Ferromex, Ferrosur and Ferrovalle – would be asked to run passenger services on them. If they do not want to do so, or fail to present viable proposals for passenger services by Jan. 15, the military could be asked to step in, the decree says.
Earlier in November, President López Obrador outlined his vision for a revitalized national passenger train network.
“We want to make it possible to travel from Cancún to Mexico City by train. From Mexico City to Guadalajara and on to Nayarit, Sinaloa, Sonora, to the border. From Mexico City to Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Monterrey, on to Nuevo Laredo. From Mexico City to Chihuahua, by train,” he said.
