The minute approved in the House and that must now be discussed and approved by the Senate is part of the package of 20 reform initiatives sent by the now former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the deputies on February 5.
Although the changes received the support of all parties, the deputies debated for six hours and in the end none of the 135 reservations presented – compacted into 38 – were accepted.
The reform consists of changes to the wording of article 28 of the Constitution to incorporate the figure of “assignments”, in addition to those of concessions and permits, as a legal possibility so that railway lines can be administered through this mechanism.
Furthermore, it is established that the use of railways for both passenger and cargo transportation is one of the priority areas for national development.
And the resources?
The opposition, made up of National Action (PAN), Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and Citizen Movement (MC), considered viable the objective of encouraging the transportation of people on trains, and that these not primarily serve to transport cargo.
But they warned that the State will not be able to do so alone, without the participation of private initiative.
Emecista Patricia Mercado highlighted the environmental benefits of rail transport, but said that the possibility must be left open for private initiative to participate through concessions to individuals, “since we know that no one can do it alone in any field of regional development.”
The leader of the PRI bench, Rubén Moreira, even proposed a third transitional article that indicates that “individuals who have concessions to provide the freight rail transport service are obliged to provide the passenger rail transport service giving priority. to populations living in isolated communities that do not have another means of public transportation.
“The law on the matter will establish the terms and conditions that are provided for in the concession title, the number of wagons or trains that at least the companies will allocate for the transportation of passengers as well as their destinations,” he stated, but without success, despite who insisted that neither in the initiative, nor in the positions of Morena and its allies, did anyone touch on the issue of resources, without which there will be no railway infrastructure.
PAN member Margarita Zavala highlighted that something positive about the reform is that “it delimits the operation of the railways from the owner of the tracks, it will be similar to the Spanish model to not allow the abuses that certainly existed.”
However, he indicated that there are two risks: “that it is not competitive because the State, you believe, gives Morena the right to feel like the owner of everything,” which is why he said that his bench will be aware of the secondary laws.
The other warning is that the State distributes or removes concessions “like it removes editorialists in the media,” according to Zavala.
José Manuel Hinojosa, also a PAN member, brought other problems into the discussion: environmental damage and insecurity: “the railway network in charge of cargo service in our country is always at risk of being stopped by the social crises of each State it passes through.” .
For example, in Michoacán during 2021 the train was stopped for 81 days, which translated into million-dollar losses for the business sector, he recalled.
For this reason, it proposed 10 proposals, among them that the Executive develop a strategic plan for the development of passenger transport with a scope of at least 20 years and with periodic reviews and that it be guaranteed that there will be no interruptions to mobility and connectivity, among others.
Meanwhile, Morena and her allies debated after a minute of applause for the social fighters of the railway sector: Demetrio Vallejo and Valentín Campa.
They highlighted the recovery of rail transport as a priority to move passengers and insisted on the past.
From the Labor Party (PT) Jorge Armando Ortiz Rodríguez recalled that in the expropriation carried out by former President Ernesto Zedillo of the National Railways, many workers were not liquidated or were retired against their will and today some justice is done to them by returning the State of the railway system.
While the PT Lilia Aguilar Gil also repudiated that the former president had given a 50-year concession the exclusive use of the railways that belonged to all Mexicans to private companies “with the pretext that 86% of the railways were in poor condition and as a consequence they had to be sold cheaply.”
But in addition, he said, he sold National Railways “clean of the debt” that the people of Mexico paid “and then he sold cheaply to Ferrocarril del Noroeste, to Ferrocarril del Pacífico Norte and the Ferrocarril del Suroeste and the Railway Terminal of the Valley of Mexico to two companies: to Kansas City and Grupo México.”
