▲ At the Santa Fe station, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is accompanied, among others, by the president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum; the head of the capital’s government, Martí Batres, and his successor, Clara Brugada.Photo by German Canseco
Arturo Sanchez Jimenez
The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, September 1, 2024, p. 5
Ten years after the start of its construction, the Mexico-Toluca El Insurgente Interurban Train arrived in Mexico City yesterday.
With thanks to the workers who have participated in the works, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador inaugurated the Santa Fe station, the first to enter into service in the country’s capital and which will be opened to users this Sunday.
López Obrador boarded convoy T017 at around 4:40 p.m. in the Zinacantepec workshop area, in the state of Mexico, to make the first trip to Santa Fe, accompanied by the president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum; the head of the Government of Mexico City, Martí Batres; his successor, Clara Brugada, and the governor of the State of Mexico, Delfina Gómez, among other officials and the press.
It took the train about 50 minutes to travel almost 50 kilometers and five stations (Zinacantepec, Toluca, Metepec, Lerma and Santa Fe) to reach the new provisional terminal, where work is still pending, such as vehicle access under construction and stairs to reach the platforms that are missing handrails.
In a short message (I’m not going to talk much today because tomorrow we’re going to report.
said the president about his sixth Government Report, which he presented today at the Zócalo), López Obrador explained that when he began his mandate he decided to continue this railway development that the previous government left unfinished, since it would benefit the population, while he opted to cancel the Texcoco airport and the sale to private individuals of lands of the National Defense Secretariat in Santa Fe, since both projects had been conceived solely to do business with corruption.
List, fourth section of Chapultepec
The president announced that the fourth section of Chapultepec Park is ready and that next week he will inaugurate the remaining sections of the Maya Train.
The president-elect reiterated that the third and final stage of El Insurgente, which will go from Santa Fe to Observatorio, is expected to be ready in December, and stressed that her government will continue to develop railway infrastructure in the country. We are going to start two projects: a train that will go from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo, and another that goes the other way, from Mexico to Guadalajara, and from there along the Pacific to Nogales.
he explained.
The Interurban Train (which began construction on July 7, 2014, during Enrique Peña Nieto’s term) will have a 58-kilometer electric track, the cost of which went from 38 billion to more than 110 billion pesos.
On September 15, 2023, the first stage of the train, 20 kilometers long, was put into operation, running from Zinacantepec to Lerma. According to the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation, stage 2 is 29 kilometers long and the entire route has 10 trains in service, while another dozen are ready to go into operation when the third stage is ready.
They have automatic piloting with a safety system that has passed tests to ensure that braking on the slope coming from Toluca to Mexico City is completely safe.
With the new station coming into operation, the trip from Zinacantepec to Santa Fe is expected to take about 45 minutes and represent a saving of 1.5 hours for users.
The service hours are from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. 365 days a year and access is with the Integrated Mobility Card or with a ticket that can be purchased at the modules of each station. The full trip will cost 90 pesos, while the minimum fare will be 15 pesos.
