By Bob Walsh
Many people do not know that there is a very very busy
rail line that more or less parallels the Panama Canal. A lot of
freight goes over that rail line from shippers who are too cheap to pay
the significant canal transit charges.
Mexico
is now building a major railroad project to accomplish the same task,
hopefully cheaper. The work was actually started in 2020 (I didn't know
that) and will, when / if completed, cover 186 miles from Salina Cruz
to Coatzacoalcos across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The government is
putting $2.85 million into the project, some of which may actually end
up paying for work on the rail line.
They
hope it will be done by 2033 and boost the GDP of Mexico by 5% all by
itself. Transit time is supposed to be seven hours, with two round
trips daily for passenger trains and three for cargo. They hope to
carry 300,000 cargo containers per year when they are up and
operational, roughly half of what the Panama Canal moves right now.
Right now the canal is passing only 25 ships per day, down from 39 per
day last year. Next year they expect it to go down to 20 ships per
day. (I confess I don't know why the decrease in traffic. I suspect it
has something to do with damage in the canal due to storms and
landslides.)
The old rail
line on this route ran a lot of traffic from 1907 to 1950, then started
deteriorating. In the 1990s all passenger service on the old line
stopped with only one freight train per day. There is significant worry
among the locals over pollution, general deterioration of the area and
negative impact on the loca lindiginous people. The government does not
really give a rat's ass about the "indians" in Mexico.
1 comment:
The reason for limiting canal traffic is lack of water. The drought has hit Central America and they are losing so much water from the big lake that they will lose the ability to operate the canal without cutting way back on traffic.
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