▲ Coming from different points, hundreds of people waited at the Observatory station, where shortly before 4 in the afternoon they chanted “five, four, three, two one…” and cheering they saw El Insurgente open its doors.Photo Roberto García Ortiz
Néstor Jiménez and Alonso Urrutia
La Jornada Newspaper
Tuesday, February 3, 2026, p. 5
The construction of the El Insurgente Train represented an investment of around 100 billion pesos and took almost 12 years, over three six-year periods. Yesterday, with the inauguration of the last two stations: Vasco de Quiroga and Observatorio, the journey of a total of 57.7 kilometers was completed to travel from Toluca to Mexico City, in a journey of less than 60 minutes at a cost of 100 pesos.
In the morning, in her press conference, which on this occasion she led from the National Cinematheque of the Fourth Section of Chapultepec, a couple of kilometers from the Vasco de Quiroga station, President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo explained how complex the construction of this means of transportation was, with project changes, increased costs and challenges in its layout to safeguard the environment.
One day after the tenders were handed out, in 2014, during the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, the executive project changed, which made the planned costs “extraordinary” and “posed a very serious problem in the administration of the work,” he said.
Furthermore, he pointed out, in the section located in Mexico City, the company in charge of the works had constant delays that led to practically no progress being made for almost a year and a half. When she was head of Government, she asked then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to terminate that contract, and instead allocate it to 11 companies with small sections. Otherwise, “it would have taken another 15 years to build,” he said.
It also required “a lot of management with the neighbors so that there are no problems.”
Additionally, in the Peña Nieto government they sought to sell the Fourth Section of Chapultepec for 10 billion pesos to allocate it to a residential area, which López Obrador stopped from allocating that area to a cultural project. At that point, the Vasco de Quiroga station was added, which was not originally planned.
“Not only is it a train that moves from Toluca to Mexico City, but it is a completely different vision of recovering public space and integrating popular areas into first-world transportation. It is the vision of the past versus that of transformation,” he highlighted.
For her part, the Head of Government, Clara Brugada, expressed that “it will remain like a day in history, because today we achieved one of the most important dreams of the city.” Meanwhile, the governor of the state of Mexico, Delfina Gómez, pointed out that it represents “a bridge of unity between the inhabitants of two sister entities.”
Meanwhile, the Secretary of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation, Jesús Esteva, and the head of the Railway Transport Regulatory Agency, Andrés Lajous, indicated that 20 trains will be available to guarantee a frequency of a maximum of 12 minutes between each trip, with service every day. Each of the electric trains has capacity for 719 passengers.
However, additional works will continue at the Observatorio station for a few months, such as the depressed passage for vehicles, the Cetram, and the connection with the Metro terminal, in addition to the extension of line 12, which will reach that point.
