(Bloomberg) -- Mexico's controversial $10 billion train project linking five southern states will be ready late next year amid changes in the plan to speed it up in time for inauguration, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday.
The Maya Train, one of Lopez Obrador's flagship infrastructure projects intended to revitalize Mexico's impoverished south, has faced logistics, legal and construction challenges since its launch in late 2018. The president is opting now to take his ambitions down a notch in favor of guaranteeing that it will run by December 2023.
“We're going to inaugurate the Maya Train in spite of everything, even though they have put obstacles in our way, because we are specialists in jumping over obstacles,” AMLO, as the president is known, told reporters in his daily press briefing.
Recent modifications to the about 1,500-kilometer (932 miles) train line include skipping the centers of major cities like Merida and Campeche and building sections at ground-level that were originally planned to be elevated, according to the national tourist office, FONATUR. The project is estimated to cost $200 billion pesos (about $10 billion), newspaper El Financiero reported in October, and includes the participation of companies such as Bombardier Inc., Alstom SA, and billionaire Carlos Slim's Grupo Carso SAB.
“What we need now is actions. We have an agreement with the companies, and agreement about how they will finish, and they will meet the deadline with a type of turn-key project. That is to say: finish the job and we'll pay you,” AMLO said Tuesday.
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