July 16, 2024 - TRA Newswire / latintimes.com -

If Mexico builds it, will Texas be ready?

That's a question yet to be answered if the new President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, follows through on her predecessors' plans to boost the Mexican rail network with an additional 1,850 miles of new track. One proposed line would run from across the Rio Grande at Laredo to Monterrey.

Not only has the Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas Transportation Commission been silent on any conversations to plan with their counterparts across the Rio Grande, the Federal Railroad Administration's vision for a new network of longer-distance trains only goes as far south as San Antonio. Laredo, about 160 miles away at the Texas-Mexico border, has been left off their map.

In an interview with Newsweek, Laredo Mayor Victor Trevino has said that he believes the plan to extend Mexico's passenger rail network to his border city could ease security concerns around migration, rather than adding to them:

The announcement by Mexican President Sheinbaum would expand the country's passenger rail system to facilitate travel to cities bordering the United States, as well as connecting the capital to other large cities such as Guadalajara. The plan would build a line from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo, which shares a border with the American city of Laredo.

Mayor Trevino said "anyone that lives on the border understands that security is of the major concerns among tourists to the Mexican border with the United States. These passenger train projects will alleviate some of those concerns and could reignite conversations of passenger trains as an alternative form of transportation in our region."

There are existing rail lines that cross the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo in Mexico to Laredo in Texas but they are used by Union Pacific, BNSF Railway and KPKC for freight movements. Any plan using the rail bridges and use of rail lines in Texas would require cooperation of the freight railroads. On the Mexican side, it is said that additional track and right of way would be required for passenger trains that would travel up to 100 mph.

Mayor Trevino added "as the number one port of entry in the United States, we applaud and welcome any increase in infrastructure that will not only boost commerce but will also boost tourism in our region."

Representatives of the Mexican Railway Association (AMF) said that completing the routes in five years, as SHeinbaum proposes, depends on successful negotiations of right of way. 

The last train to serve Laredo was the Amtrak Inter-American, which ran from 1973 to 1981. Laredo was the southern terminus and arrived and departed overnight. Previously the city was served by Missouri Pacific Railroad with through service to Mexico City, but that ended in 1969. From 1986 to 1989 a train called the Tex-Mex Express operated on summer weekends only between Laredo and Corpus Christi.

Photo credit: BNamericas