Tren Maya (Maya Train) is one of the new left-wing government’s flagship infrastructure projects, and Fonatur tourism board chief Rogelio Jiménez Pons says work on the route through five states in the east of the country “must be speeded up”, the Diario de Yucatán newspaper reports
He says the 1,525-km (950-mile) project through Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Campeche, Chiapas and Yucatán states has to be ready in 2023, and the first tier of tenders this year should link sections of track from Chiapas to Yucatán.
The second stage next year will extend the route to the major Caribbean resort of Cancún via Chichén Itzá, one of the most important Maya archaeological complexes and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Gustavo De Hoyos Walther, the head of the Coparmex employers’ confederation.
He deplored the closure of ProMexico, and warned that the “government’s all-or-nothing wager on Maya Train is almost suicidal,”
Environmentalists are standing by their objections to driving the rail network through the UN-designated Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, the second-largest expanse of tropical forest in the Americas, after the Amazon.
It is also the natural habitat of endangered jaguars, prompting Aarón Rosado Castillo, who is in charge of the Yucatan section of Maya Train, to promise to work with the National Jaguar Protection Association to “minimise the impact on their habitat”.