A station under construction for the railway line between western Mexico City and Toluca, the capital of the neighboring state of Mexico. This passenger and freight route has been under construction since 2014, and its cost has tripled due to technical issues and opposition from local communities. Image: SNT-Movilidad Urbana

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO, Apr 7 2025 (IPS)

Retired blacksmith and mechanic José Hernández nostalgically recalls the passenger trains that once passed through his hometown of Huamantla in the state of Tlaxcala, southeastern Mexico.

“By the age of 15 or 16, I was already using the train. It was the railway that came from Veracruz, passed near Huamantla, and reached” the east of Mexico City, the 99-year-old local chronicler told IPS from his town of over 98,000 inhabitants, located some 160 kilometers from the capital.

The route belonged to the then-state-owned Ferrocarril Mexicano, inaugurated in the mid-19th century and operational until 1976, when passenger trains began to be abandoned in favor of private bus companies.

Freight trains still run through Huamantla, carrying timber, oil, and various goods in containers."They are not profitable, but they are social projects. It is important to evaluate how they will be implemented to combine commercial and economic elements and thus reduce government subsidies." —Jaime Paredes

Hernández, who served as Huamantla’s mayor from 1989 to 1991, used to travel to the nearby town of Apizaco, also in Tlaxcala, aboard coal-burning locomotives—a 30-minute journey where a ticket to Mexico City cost about three dollars in today’s money.

“We miss the passenger service; hopefully, it will return soon. Everything in Huamantla is abandoned now. The train used to stop here to load water from a deep well,” he lamented.

To Hernández’s delight, the government of Claudia Sheinbaum, in office since October, is promoting new railway projects to diversify passenger transport. However, the plan faces significant challenges, including profitability and environmental impact.

The first initiative is a 55-kilometer line between Mexico City and Pachuca in Hidalgo, built on an old railbed. Construction began on March 22 without environmental approval—a legal requirement—though the Environment Ministry granted the permit six days later.

The new passenger and freight line has an initial cost of US$2.44 billion, is expected to open in the first half of 2027, and will cross six municipalities in Hidalgo and four in the neighboring state of Mexico.

The second project is a 227-kilometer line between Mexico City and Querétaro, with a preliminary cost of about US$7 billion, passing through 22 municipalities in four states. Construction is set to begin this April.

Both projects are part of the National Railway Development Plan and the National Industrialization and Shared Prosperity Strategy (known as Plan México), launched in January by Sheinbaum as her flagship development program, which also includes investments in electricity, electric vehicle assembly, and microprocessors.

Sheinbaum’s administration is replicating the fast-track approach used for the Maya Train (TM), with the full weight of the state apparatus behind it.

Rail is less polluting than air, sea, or road transport, but the steel and cement required for its infrastructure limit its eco-friendly image.

The Mexican government is also preparing tenders for rail lines from Saltillo to Nuevo Laredo (crossing the Northern states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas) and Querétaro to Irapuato (in the states of Querétaro and Guanajuato).

These new lines, expected to start operating between 2027 and 2028, will join seven existing passenger routes, including suburban and tourist railways—three of which are privately concessioned.

From January to October 2024, these railways carried 42.22 million passengers, an 11% increase from the same period in 2023. Most (90%) were suburban passengers, highlighting the need for intercity rail and the challenges of expansion.

A view of downtown Pachuca, the capital of Hidalgo in central Mexico. In March, the government began construction on a passenger and freight rail line between Mexico City and this city, set to begin operations in the first half of 2027. Image: Inafed

Environmental Paradoxes 

Jaime Paredes, an academic at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s School of Engineering, stresses the need for clear definitions of efficiency, CO₂ emission reductions —the gas generated by human activities responsible for global warming—, and travel times.

“It’s a good tool, but we must evaluate noise pollution, impacts on aquifers, and economic factors. They are not profitable, but they are social projects. It is important to evaluate how they will be implemented to combine commercial and economic elements and thus reduce government subsidies,” he told IPS.

Environmental impact assessments (EIAs) submitted to the Environment Ministry suggest the Pachuca line will have fewer impacts than Querétaro’s.

The Pachuca line will cross seven areas of very low and seven of low ecosystem quality, due to agriculture and human communities, causing 11 negative and seven beneficial environmental impacts. Soil and water contamination are the main concerns, with six protected species identified in the area.

The Querétaro line, however, crosses 12 very low and 30 low ecosystem-quality zones, affecting seven protected natural areas, including Tula National Park in Hidalgo, wetlands in Querétaro, and Xochimilco, which provides ecological services like clean water and air to Mexico City.

Construction will clear vegetation across 90 hectares (five of forest, 0.62 of low jungle). The EIA found 63 threatened plant species and 136 fauna species. Risks include water source disruption, flooding in three sections, land subsidence, air pollution, and ecological fragmentation—though it also predicts socioeconomic benefits like job creation and a stronger economy.

In total, the Querétaro line will have 28 environmental impacts (21 negative, seven positive). The government assumes socioeconomic benefits will outweigh environmental costs, proposing prevention, mitigation, and compensation measures.

While the Pachuca trains will be electric, Querétaro’s will use both electricity and diesel. A key drawback is that Mexico’s electricity largely comes from fossil fuels (especially gas), limiting emissions reductions.

The Pachuca line’s CO₂ emissions are unestimated, while Querétaro’s will emit 37 tons monthly during construction.

Mexico has very few passenger rail routes, and the current government aims to expand this less polluting form of public transport compared to air, sea, and road travel. Image: ARTF

Precedents

Past passenger rail projects offer lessons.

The intercity train connecting western Mexico City with Toluca (known as El Insurgente), under construction since 2014 and partially operational since 2023, saw its budget balloon from US$2.86 billion to US$6.85 billion.

The Maya Train (TM), more tourist-oriented than for local passengers, has not displaced bus travel, according to 2024 reports.

The TM spans 1,500 km across five southern and southeastern states, with five of seven planned sections operational since 2023. The project has faced delays, cost overruns, and environmental violations.

Other indicators raise concerns. CO2 emissions from Mexico’s rail system (freight and passenger) are rising. Diesel consumption nearly tripled between 2021 and late 2023. Emissions from the Suburban Train (linking northern Mexico City and the state of Mexico) have increased since 2021, despite lower electricity use.

Rail expert Paredes recommends updating the 1995 Regulatory Law of Railway Service to “ensure concessionaires and assignees share responsibilities.”

“Users should be part of comprehensive reviews. Clear parameters and indicators are needed to assess environmental impact reduction. Transparency in results would provide certainty. Communities and municipalities must be integrated into plans,” he urged.

Meanwhile, chronicler Hernández hopes for a major push to revive trains across Mexico’s landscapes.

“A strong campaign is needed to attract people. Trains could be as popular as they once were,” he said.

The port of Salina Cruz, in the southern state of Oaxaca, is one of the vital infrastructures for transporting goods and hydrocarbons. It is part of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, one of the megaprojects of the current Mexican government, which seeks to connect the Atlantic and Pacific coasts by means of a railroad and several highways, and is aimed at the economic development of the region through the creation of 10 industrial parks. CREDIT: Government of Mexico

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 16 2023 (IPS)

Due to insufficient pressure water does not make it up to Elliot Escobar’s house in the Mexican municipality of Matías Romero, where he lives on the second floor, so he pipes it up with a hose from his sister’s home, located on the first floor of the house shared by the two families.

“I store it in 1,000-liter tanks, which last me about a month. We recycle water, to water the plants, for example. In the municipality people don’t pay for the water because there is none, it comes out of the pipes dirty. It’s a worrisome situation,” said the 44-year-old lawyer."The most urgent thing is to make a master plan, which must have a water plan before other processes. It is crucial, before introducing industries. And each one must have very rigid zoning, to avoid pollution of water sources." -- Úrsula Oswald

Matías Romero, with a population of just over 38,000, sits along the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (CIIT), a megaproject under the responsibility of the Ministry of the Navy and one of the three most important projects of the current government, together with the Mayan Train, in the southeastern Yucatán peninsula, and the Olmeca refinery system, in the state of Tabasco, also in the southeast.

The demand for water from the CIIT works is causing concern among the local population, already affected by water shortages, explained the lawyer, who shares the house above his sister’s with the other two members of his family.

“The project will require water and electricity, and our situation is uncertain,” Escobar said. “Everything has to have a methodology, be systematized, the infrastructure must be consolidated. In Salina Cruz (another stop along the megaproject) there have been complicated water problems in the neighborhoods; it’s a problem that’s been going on for years. There are too few wells to supply the local population.”

The lawyer is a member of the non-governmental Corriente del Pueblo Sol Rojo and spoke to IPS from his home in the state of Oaxaca, some 660 kilometers southwest of Mexico City.

In the area, the local population works, at least until now, in agriculture and cattle, pig and goat farming. The municipality is also a crossing point for thousands of undocumented Central American migrants who arrive by train or truck from the Guatemalan border en route to the United States.

Despite the fact that water is a fundamental element of the megaproject, CIIT lacks a water plan, according to responses to requests for access to information submitted by IPS.

The works are part of the Tehuantepec Isthmus Development Program that the Mexican government has been executing since 2019 with the aim of developing the south and southeast of this country of some 129 million inhabitants, the second largest Latin American economy, after Brazil.

A map of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, some 300 kilometers long, which seeks to connect Mexico’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts by means of highways and a rehabilitated railway to promote industrial development in the south and southeast of the country and encourage exports. CREDIT: Fonadin

An inter-oceanic transformation

The plan for the isthmus includes 10 industrial parks, and the renovation of the ports of Salina Cruz, on the Pacific Ocean, and Coatzacoalcos, on the Atlantic, connected by the Isthmus of Tehuantepec Railway, which is under reconstruction.

It also includes the modernization of the refineries of Salina Cruz, in the state of Oaxaca, and Minatitlán, in the state of Veracruz, the laying of a gas pipeline and the construction of a gas liquefaction plant off the coast of Salina Cruz.

The development program covers 46 municipalities in Oaxaca and 33 in Veracruz, over a distance of some 300 kilometers. The 10 industrial sites, called “Poles of Development for Well-Being,” require 380 hectares each.

Researcher Ursula Oswald of the Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research at the public National Autonomous University of Mexico told IPS that she proposed a comprehensive model for analyzing all aspects of the megaproject.

“The most urgent thing is to make a master plan, which must have a water plan before other processes. It is crucial, before introducing industries. And each one must have very rigid zoning, to avoid pollution of water sources, and not to repeat the chaos we have seen in the north,” she said from the city of Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos, next to the Mexican capital.

The researcher said it is necessary to answer questions such as “which basins and aquifers (can be used), and how does the surface water interact with the groundwater?”

The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in office since December 2018, is looking for companies to set up shop in the south and southeast of the country, in an attempt to attract investment and generate jobs in these areas, the country’s poorest.

But one obstacle to development lies in the logistics of moving the products to the U.S. market, the magnet for interested corporations. Other problems are the lack of skilled workers and the environmental impact in a region characterized by rich biodiversity.

Some recent cases show the difficulties of such initiatives. The U.S.-based electric car-maker Tesla chose the northern state of Nuevo León in March to build its factory in Mexico, despite López Obrador’s interest in having it set up shop in the south.

Between 2020 and 2022, the CIIT’s budget was 162 million dollars in the first year, 203 million dollars in 2021, and almost double that in 2022: 529 million dollars. But in 2023 it has dropped to 374 million dollars.

Independent estimates put the total investment required for the CIIT projects at 1.4 billion dollars, although there is no precise official figure.

A demonstration in Puente Madera, in the state of Oaxaca, against the advance of the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, which runs between that southwestern state and Veracruz, in the southeast. The Mexican megaproject has generated opposition from some groups in the region, which see it as an imposed initiative that will hurt local communities. CREDIT: APIIDTT

Water pressure

The megaproject puts greater pressure on water resources in a region where water is both abundant in some areas and overexploited.

Of the 21 aquifers in Oaxaca, five are in deficit, according to figures from the governmental National Water Commission (Conagua). Among these are the aquifers of Tehuantepec and Ostuta, which have suffered a deficit since the last decade and are on the corridor route.

In Veracruz, of the 20 water tables, five suffer from excessive extraction, such as the one in the Papaloapan River basin, also in the CIIT area.

One of the five objectives of the development program is to increase biodiversity and improve the quality of water, soil and air with a sustainable approach.

Meanwhile, CIIT’s regional program stipulates that the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources must guarantee water for both the incoming companies and the local residents.

However, the Auditoría Superior de la Federación, the national comptroller, found no information on increasing biodiversity or improving water, soil and air quality by 2021. Furthermore, it did not have sufficient data to assess compliance with the five CIIT objectives.

For the provision of the necessary water, CIIT identified in its 2022 progress and results report the sale of water rights among users, the transfer from the Tehuantepec aquifer, despite its deficit, and deep wells, the use of dams, rivers or the construction of a desalination plant, in addition to the consumption of treated wastewater.

A model of the Texistepec industrial center in Veracruz, which will form part of the Tehuantepec Isthmus Development Program, that includes the construction of five industrial parks in the southern state of Oaxaca and another five in the southeastern state of Veracruz, five of which the Mexican government has already put out to tender. CREDIT: CIIT

Indigenous people

A May 2021 document on consultations with indigenous communities in the Oaxaca municipality of Ciudad Ixtepec, also along the corridor, seen by IPS, suggests studies on the use of recycled and treated water for some industrial processes, the promotion of the use of rainwater for green areas, and the introduction of programs to raise awareness and foment responsible water use.

The megaproject’s area of influence is home to some 900,000 indigenous people from 10 different native peoples. But the consultation process, free of interference, prior to the development of the works and with sufficient and timely information, only covered less than one percent of the native population.

CIIT has already launched the international bidding process for the construction of three industrial parks in Veracruz and two in Oaxaca.

The right to a healthy environment is another aspect of a context of human rights violations. At the end of July, the Civil Observation Mission, made up of representatives of non-governmental organizations, found violations of access to information, free participation and freedom of expression.

For this reason, Escobar stressed the need for federal authorities to pay close attention to the project.

“Water is not a commodity, its supply has to be guaranteed to the local population,” the lawyer said. “We have to invest heavily in water and develop awareness about it. We do not understand their concept of modernity, they think it is only about building megaprojects. There is going to be an environmental problem in the medium term.”

For her part, Oswald suggested going beyond the traditional focus on attracting investment.

“No company is going to invest if it does not have guaranteed (water) supply, land, a way to export its merchandise on the sides of both oceans, and labor,” said the researcher. “It is necessary to link water, cost, social issues, and which indigenous groups are in the region. What other mechanisms do we have to provide water? Who has control in the region? That is basic to understanding the conflicts. It is a crucial socio-cultural issue.”

Carrying the Mayan flag, members of the Colibrí Collective lead a march against the Mayan Train in the city of Valladolid, in the southern Mexican state of Yucatán, in May 2023. The construction of the Mexican government’s most important megaproject has drawn criticism from affected communities due to its environmental, social and cultural effects. CREDIT: Arturo Contreras / Pie de Página

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, May 18 2023 (IPS)

Mexico’s development banks have violated their own socio-environmental standards while granting loans for the construction of the Mayan Train (TM), the flagship project of the presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The National Bank of Public Works and Services (Banobras), the Nacional Financiera (Nafin) bank and the Foreign Commerce Bank (Bancomext) allocated at least 564 million dollars to the railway line since 2021, according to the yearbooks and statements of the three state entities.

Banobras, which finances infrastructure and public services, granted 480.83 million dollars for the project in the Yucatan peninsula; Nafin, which extends loans and guarantees to public and private works, allocated 81 million; and Bancomext, which provides financing to export and import companies and other strategic sectors, granted 2.91 million.

Bancomext and Banobras did not evaluate the credit, while Nafin classified the information as “confidential”, even though it involves public funds, according to each institution’s response to IPS’ requests for public information.“(The banks) are committing internal violations of their own provisions in the granting of credits, in order to give loans to projects that are not environmentally viable and that do not respect the local communities.” -- Gustavo Alanís

The three institutions have environmental and social risk management systems that include lists of activities that are to be excluded from financing.

In the case of Bancomext and Nafin, these rules are mandatory during the credit granting process, while Banobras explains that its objective is to verify that the loans evaluated are compatible with the bank’s environmental and social commitments.

Bancomext prohibits 19 types of financing; Banobras, 17; and Nafin, 18. The three institutions all veto “production or activities that place in jeopardy lands that are owned by indigenous peoples or have been claimed by adjudication, without the full documented consent of said peoples.”

Likewise, Banobras and Nafin must not support “projects that imply violations of national and international conventions and treaties regarding the indigenous population and native peoples.”

The three entities already had information to evaluate the railway project, since the Superior Audit of the Federation, the state comptroller, had already pointed to shortcomings in the indigenous consultation process and in the assessment of social risks, in the 2019 Report on the Results of the Superior Audit of the Public Account.

The total cost of the TM has already exceeded 15 billion dollars, 70 percent above what was initially planned, mostly borne by the government’s National Fund for Tourism Promotion (Fonatur), responsible for the megaproject.

Mexico’s three state development banks are partially financing the Mayan Train, for which they have failed to comply with the due process of the evaluation of socio-environmental risks that are part of their regulations. The photo shows the clearing of part of the route of one of the branches of the railway line in the municipality of Playa del Carmen, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, in March 2022. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Violations

Angel Sulub, a Mayan indigenous member of the U kúuchil k Ch’i’ibalo’on Community Center, criticized the policies applied and the disrespect for the safeguards regulated by the state financial entities themselves.

“This shows us, once again, that there is a violation of our right to life, and there has not been at any moment in the process, from planning to execution, a will to respect the rights of the peoples,” he told IPS from the Felipe Carrillo Port, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, where one of the TM stations will be located.

Sulub, who is also a poet, described the consultation as a “sham”. “Respect for the consultation was violated in all cases, an adequate consultation was not carried out. They did not comply with the minimum information, it was not a prior consultation, nor was it culturally appropriate,” he argued.

In December 2019, the government National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) organized a consultation with indigenous groups in the region that the Mexican office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights questioned for non-compliance with international standards.

Official data indicates that some 17 million native people live in Mexico, belonging to 69 different peoples and representing 13 percent of the total population.

INPI initially anticipated a population of 1.5 million indigenous people to consult about the TM in 1,331 communities. But that total was reduced to 1.32 million, with no official explanation for the 12 percent decrease. The population in the project’s area of ​​influence totaled 3.57 million in 2019, according to the Superior Audit report.

The conduct of the three financial institutions reflects the level of compliance with the president’s plans, as has happened with other state agencies that have refused to create hurdles for the railway, work on which began in 2020 and which will have seven routes.

The Mayan Train, run by Fonatur and backed by public funds, will stretch some 1,500 kilometers through 78 municipalities in the states of Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán, within the peninsula, as well as the neighboring states of Chiapas and Tabasco. It will have 21 stations and 14 other stops.

The Yucatan peninsula is home to the second largest jungle in Latin America, after the Amazon, and is notable for its fragile biodiversity. In this territory, furthermore, to speak of the population is to speak of the Mayans, because in a high number of municipalities they are a majority and 44 percent of the total are Mayan-speaking.

The government promotes the megaproject, whose locomotives will transport thousands of tourists and cargo, such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork – key economic activities in the area – as an engine for socioeconomic development in the southeast of the country.

It argues that it will create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional attractions and energize the regional economy, which has sparked polarizing controversies between its supporters and critics.

The railway faces complaints of deforestation, pollution, environmental damage and human rights violations, but these have not managed to stop the project from going forward.

In November 2022, López Obrador, who wants at all costs for the locomotives to start running in December of this year, classified the TM as a “priority project” through a presidential decree, which facilitates the issuing of environmental permits.

Gustavo Alanís, executive director of the non-governmental Mexican Center for Environmental Law, questioned the way the development banks are proceeding.

“They are committing internal violations of their own provisions in the granting of credits, in order to give loans to projects that are not environmentally viable and that do not respect the local communities. They are not complying with their own internal guidelines and requirements regarding the environment and indigenous peoples in the granting of credits,” he told IPS.

Groups opposed to the Mayan Train protest along a segment of the megaproject in the municipality of Carrillo Puerto, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, on May 3. CREDIT: Arturo Contreras / Pie de Página

Trendy guidelines

In the last decade, socio-environmental standards have gained relevance for the promotion of sustainable works and their consequent financing that respects ecosystems and the rights of affected communities, such as those located along the railway.

Although the three Mexican development banks have such guidelines, they have not joined the largest global initiatives in this field.

None of them form part of the Equator Principles, a set of 10 criteria established in 2003 and adopted by 138 financial institutions from 38 countries, and which define their environmental, social and corporate governance.

Nor are they part of the Principles for Responsible Banking, of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative, announced in 2019 and which have already been adopted by 324 financial and insurance institutions from more than 50 nations.

These standards address the impact of projects; sustainable client and user practices; consultation and participation of stakeholders; governance and institutional culture; as well as transparency and corporate responsibility.

Of the three Mexican development banks, only Banobras has a mechanism for complaints, which has not received any about its loans, including the railway project.

In this regard, Sulub questioned the different ways to guarantee indigenous rights in this and other large infrastructure projects.

“The legal fight against the railway and other megaprojects has shown us in recent years that, as peoples, we do not have effective access to justice either, even though we have clearly demonstrated violations of our rights. Although it is a good thing that companies and banks have these guidelines and that they comply with them, we do not have effective mechanisms for enforcement,” he complained.

In Sulub’s words, this leads to a breaching of the power of indigenous people to decide on their own ways of life, since the government does not abide by judicial decisions, which in his view is further evidence of an exclusionary political system.

For his part, Alanís warned of the banks’ complicity in the damage reported and the consequent risk of legal liability if the alleged irregularities are not resolved.

“If not, they must pay the consequences and hold accountable those who do not follow internal policies. The international banks have inspection panels, to receive complaints when the bank does not follow its own policies,” he stated.

In Anapolis, Brazil's North-South railway line, which took more than 30 years to complete, was unable to connect with the existing network due to the different width of its tracks and its southern section remained inactive for several years, until it was privatised in 2019. Precedents like this one create concern about the new planned railway lines, dedicated to the transportation of grains to the export ports. CREDIT: Mario Osava

By Mario Osava
RÍO DE JANEIRO, Aug 27 2021 (IPS)

The sea of soybeans that sprouts every November will spread even further in the state of Mato Grosso if three new railway lines that would boost soy production in central-western Brazil and growing parts of the Amazon rainforest are built.

The most controversial railway line, the EF-170, is better known by its nickname “Ferrogrão (grainrail)” because it is to be built for the export of grains from the mid-northern part of Mato Grosso, the area where most soybeans and corn are produced in Brazil, through Amazonian rivers and ports in the north of the country.

Mato Grosso already produces 70 million tons of grains per year, a total that will reach 120 million tons by 2030, said Minister of Infrastructure Tarcisio de Freitas, who described the Ferrogrão as “the most important logistics project in Brazil,” in a digital meeting with foreign correspondents in June.

It would lower freight rates in general, by creating competition in the transportation of the bulk of the national agricultural production, replacing thousands of trucks and expanding exports through the ports of northern Brazil, relieving pressure on ports in the south and southeast.

The government intended to auction the concession for the rail line this year, but is unlikely to do so in the face of environmental obstacles and economic uncertainties.

The railway would cause the deforestation of between 1,671 and 2,416 square kilometres by stimulating the expansion of the planted area in the state of Mato Grosso alone, according to a study by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), an international non-profit organisation with which the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro is associated.

The study does not take into account damage in the state of Pará, where two thirds of the 933 kilometres of the line would be built and where the port of Miritituba on the Tapajós River, the railway’s destination, is located.

In Brazil’s Amazon region, the EF-170 railroad, known as Ferrogrão, is a project of agricultural transnationals supported by the Brazilian government. The aim of the railway, construction of which has not yet begun, is to bolster soybean and corn exports through the ports of northern Brazil. Map: National Land Transport Agency of Brazil

At the port, grains are transferred to barges that travel about 1,000 kilometres on the Tapajós and Amazon rivers to reach the export ports where the large transatlantic ships dock.

In addition to underestimating the extent of the deforestation, the project would violate indigenous rights, threaten conservation areas and stimulate illegal land appropriation, says a group of 38 social organisations in an “extrajudicial notification” to banks that could finance the construction of the Ferrogrão.

“The most serious thing is that it does not evaluate alternative routes,” said Sergio Guimarães, coordinator of the Infrastructure and Social Justice Working Group, a coalition of 47 organisations that headed the notification pointing out nine flaws in the project. (The Working Group is one of the 38 social organisations that sent the notification.)

There are alternatives for transportation already in place or under way for soybeans in Mato Grosso, where 35.9 million tons were produced this year (26.5 percent of the country’s total), such as the BR-163 highway along the same route as the Ferrogrão, a railroad under construction and two others in the planning stage. They should all be assessed in order to find the best economic and environmental options, he told IPS by telephone from Brasilia.

“It is very difficult for the Ferrogrão to be competitive, considering that the BR-163 highway is already in place and there are other alternatives,” said economist Claudio Frischtak, president of the InterB International Business Consultancy.

“It’s a bad project,” he told IPS in a conversation in Rio de Janeiro. “It underestimates the investments and the time needed for implementation and runs the risk of having the same fate as two other railroads whose construction was interrupted in the last decade, leading to the loss of public resources.”

The state of Tocantins in central Brazil aims to repeat this century the soybean boom that transformed the neighbouring state of Mato Grosso, the country’s largest soy and corn producer, which has record exports. To do this, producers are demanding the extension of rail transport. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

The economist compared the data from the government’s proposal with figures from the Midwest Integration Railway (Fico), a project under construction by the mining company Vale, which has years of experience in railways. Fico will link Agua Boa, a city in central-eastern Mato Grosso, and Mara Rosa, 383 kilometres to the east, in the state of Goiás.

Based on this comparison, Frischtak calculates that the actual cost of building the Ferrogrão would be 3.4 times the amount reported by the government: 5.45 billion dollars rather than 1.58 billion dollars.

The projected rate of return of 11.05 percent is also totally unrealistic, he said, as is the estimated construction time of nine years.

Frischtak projected that construction would actually take 21.9 years, or even longer given the complicated terrain where the Ferrogrão would be built.

The Fico does not reach the most productive soybean production area, which is around the city of Sinop, the planned starting point of the Ferrogrão. Instead, it connects with the North-South Railway that reaches the port of Itaqui, on the Atlantic coast of the northeastern state of Maranhão, which has the capacity to serve the largest ships.

The third new rail alternative for grains in Mato Grosso is the Ferronorte, a 730-kilometre stretch planned by Rumo, the largest national railroad transportation company, with access to the Port of Santos, the country’s biggest, after crossing the state of São Paulo, the most densely populated productive, agricultural and industrial state in Brazil.

The large warehouses next to the BR-163 highway, used by trucks to transport soybeans to the Amazon ports through which they are exported, have turned Lucas do Rio Verde into a hub of the agro-export economy of the state of Mato Grosso, in central-western Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Rumo’s rail network already reaches Rondonópolis, in the south of Mato Grosso. The idea would be to extend it to the mid-north of the state, where large quantities of soybeans are produced between October and February, and corn in the following months, on the same land. Agriculture in tropical climates has the competitive advantage of producing two harvests per year.

But the biggest competition for the Ferrogrão, according to Frischtak, would be the BR-163 highway, the paving of which was completed in 2019. Management of the highway was awarded to a private company this year. Overland trucking costs fell and continue to decline, which will hinder the financial viability of the new parallel rail line.

The economist argued that it would make more economic sense to upgrade existing infrastructure, such as widening the highway and improving the waterways that also serve agricultural exports through the north. “We must not continue to make the same mistakes,” he said.

But Tiago Stefanello Nogueira, coordinator of Agricultural Policy and Logistics of the Association of Soybean and Corn Producers of Mato Grosso (AprosojaMT), said there is no doubt about the viability and benefits of the Ferrogrão.

“There will be less pollution, because it will reduce the consumption of petroleum derivatives, greater transportation capacity, less carbon emissions and thousands of jobs created during construction, as well as demand for services; there are many benefits,” he asserted.

Railroads are mostly used for freight transport in Brazil, and passenger trains like this one on the Carajás line in Maranhão state often run at a loss, as compensation for the local populace from the companies that control the rail lines. CREDIT: Mario Osava/IPS

Only 11 percent of the land in Mato Grosso is dedicated to agriculture, according to Aprosoja, and this could expand to 40 percent, Nogueira estimates.

“To achieve this we need all modes of transportation, whether railways, highways and future waterways, and the paving and widening of roads,” he told IPS by telephone from Sorriso, a city located in a soybean-growing area in the north of the state.

But that’s the problem, according to Alexandre Sampaio, Policy and Programme coordinator of the International Accountability Project (IAP), an international organisation that works for human and environmental rights in development. He said Ferronorte would exacerbate the already unbalanced development model in its area of influence.

Of the 90.3 million hectares in Mato Grosso, 9.7 million are under agricultural production. That includes nine million hectares where soybeans are grown and then corn and cotton after the soybean harvest. The remaining 0.7 million hectares are dedicated to other agricultural activities, according to Aprosoja.

In other words, even though the state of Mato Grosso is known as a huge breadbasket, it produces abundant agricultural production for export but little food, which it has to buy from other regions. In fact, only 18 percent of the state´s population is rural.

Although it is intended to be used for export agriculture, “the railroad is a great investment that drives up the value of the land, boosts the economy and wealth, in addition to reducing traffic on the roads. In other words, it indirectly benefits family agriculture,” said Nilton Macedo, president of the Federation of Agricultural Workers of Mato Grosso.

“We have 148,000 members, 97,000 of whom were resettled as part of the agrarian reform programme,” he told IPS by telephone from Pontes e Lacerda, in the southeastern part of the state. The federation says it represents 500,000 workers, including wage-earning farmworkers and family farmers who work their own land.

In contrast, soybean and corn producers number only 7,300, according to Aprosoja, but they dominate the state’s economy.

The Mayan Train, the flagship megaproject of leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, seeks to promote the socioeconomic development of the south and southeast of the country, with an emphasis on tourism and with the goal of transporting 50,000 passengers per day by 2023. The fear is that the mass influx of tourists will damage preserved coastal areas, such as Tulum beach in the state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy

By Emilio Godoy
Mexico City, Aug 25 2020 (IPS)

Mayan anthropologist Ezer May fears that the tourism development and real estate construction boom that will be unleashed by the Mayan Train, the main infrastructure project of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will disrupt his community.

“What we think is that the east of the town could be affected,” May told IPS by phone from his hometown of Kimbilá.

“The most negative impact will come when they start building the development hub around the train station,” he said. “We know that the tourism industry and other businesses will receive a boost. There is uncertainty about what is to come; many ejidatarios [members of an ejido, public land held in common by the inhabitants of a village and farmed cooperatively or individually] don’t know what’s happening.”

This town of 4,000 people, whose name means “water by the tree”, is in the municipality of Izamal in the northern part of the state of Yucatan, about 1,350 km southeast of Mexico City. The district will have a Mayan Train station, although its size is not yet known, and the prospect awakens fears as well as hope among the communities involved.

In Kimbilá, 10 km from the city of Izamal, there are 560 ejidatarios who own some 5,000 hectares of land where they grow corn and vegetables, raise small livestock and produce honey.

“These ejido lands are going to be in the sights of tourism and real estate companies, real estate speculation and everything else that urban development implies. We will see the same old dispossession and asymmetrical agreements and contracts for buying up land at extremely low prices; we’ll see unequal treatment,” said May.

The government’s National Tourism Fund (Fonatur) is promoting the project, which is to cost between 6.2 and 7.8 billion dollars. Construction began in May.

The plan is for the Mayan Train to begin operating in 2022, with 19 stations and 12 other stops along some 1,400 km of track, which will be added to the nearly 27,000 km of railways in Mexico, Latin America’s second largest economy, population 129 million.

It will run through 78 municipalities in the southern and southeastern states of the country: Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Chiapas and Tabasco, the first three of which are in the Yucatan Peninsula, which has one of the most important and fragile ecosystems in Mexico and is home to 11.1 million people.

Its locomotives will run on diesel and the trains are projected to carry about 50,000 passengers daily by 2023, reaching 221,000 by 2053, in addition to cargo such as transgenic soybeans, palm oil and pork, which are major agricultural products in the region.

A map of the Mayan Train’s route through the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Construction began in May and it is expected to begin operating in 2023. CREDIT: Fonatur

Pros and cons

The Mexican government is promoting the megaproject as an engine for social development that will create jobs, boost tourism beyond the traditional attractions and energise the regional economy.

But it has unleashed controversy between those who back the administration’s propaganda and those who question the railway because of its potential environmental, social and cultural impacts, as well as the risk of fuelling illegal activities, such as human trafficking and drug smuggling.

The megaproject involves the construction of development hubs in the stations, which include businesses, drinking water, drainage, electricity and urban infrastructure, and which, according to the ministry of the environment itself, represent the greatest environmental threat posed by the railway.

U.N. Habitat, which offers technical advice on the project’s land-use planning aspects, estimates that the Mayan Train will create one million jobs by 2030 and lift 1.1 million people out of poverty, in an area that includes 42 municipalities with high poverty rates.

The region has become the country’s new energy frontier, with the construction of wind and solar parks, and agribusiness production such as transgenic soy and large pig farms. At the same time, it suffers from high levels of deforestation, fuelled by lumber extraction and agro-industry.

The environmental impact assessment itself and several independent scientific studies warn of the ecological damage that would be caused by the railway, which experts say the Mexican government does not seem willing to address.

The crux: the development model

Violeta Núñez, an academic at the public Autonomous Metropolitan University, told IPS that there is an internal contradiction within the government between those seeking a change in the socioeconomic conditions in the region and supporters of the real estate business.

“You have to ask yourself what kind of development you are pursuing and whether it is the best option,” she said. “The Mayan Train is aimed at profits and these stakeholders are not interested in people’s well-being, but in making money. What some indigenous organisations have said is that they never asked for a railway, and they feel that the project has been imposed on them.”

The railroad will cross ejido lands in five states where there are 5,386 ejidos totalling 12.5 million hectares. The ejidos would contribute the land and would be the main investors. To finance the stations, Fonatur has proposed three types of trusts that can be quoted on the Mexican stock market and that entail financial risks, such as the loss of the investment.

The undertaking was not suspended by the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico, as the government classified its construction as an “essential activity”.

In Calakmul, in the southeastern state of Campeche, the Mayan Train will make use of the right-of-way that the Federal Electricity Commission has for its power lines. But on other stretches construction of the new 1,400-km railway will lead to the eviction of families. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

To legitimise its construction, the leftwing López Obrador administration organised a consultation with indigenous communities through 30 regional assemblies, 15 informative and 15 consultative, held Nov. 29-30 and Dec. 14-15, 2019, respectively.

These assemblies were attended by 10,305 people from 1,078 indigenous communities in the five states, out of a potentially affected population of 1.5 million people, 150,000 of whom are indigenous.

But the consultation was carried out before the environmental impact assessment of the megaproject was even completed.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Mexico questioned whether this process met international standards, such as the provisions of International Labour Organisation Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, to which the country is a party.

The railway will also displace an undetermined number of people, to make room for the tracks and stations, although U.N. Habitat insists that this will be “consensual”.

Fears of a new Cancún

The government argues that the project will not repeat the mistakes of mass tourism destinations, symbolised by Cancún, which wrought environmental havoc in that former Caribbean paradise in Quintana Roo. But its critics argue that the major beneficiaries appear to be the same big tourism, real estate and hotel chains, and that it will cause the same problems as a result of the heavy influx of visitors.

In Kimbilá, the local population already has firsthand experience of confrontations over megaprojects, such as a Spanish company’s attempt to build a wind farm, cancelled in 2016. But the difference is that now the opponent is much more powerful.

May said the railway “is an attempt to transform indigenous peoples and integrate them into the tourism-based economic model. They want us to imagine development from a global perspective, because it is a sign of socioeconomic progress. They believe that tourism is the source of progress, that cities bring development and that this is the best way to go.”

In Izamal, home to more than 26,800 people, construction of the development hub would require 853 hectares, 376 of which belong to ejidos.

Núñez warned of the disappearance of the campesino (peasant farmer) and indigenous way of life. “People have survived because of their relationship with the land and now this survival is being thrown into question and they are to become workers in the development hubs. This is not an option, if we are to defend the rural indigenous way of life,” she said.

The researcher suggested that an alternative would be the appropriation of the megaproject by the communities, in which “the ejidatarios themselves, in a joint association, present an alternative proposal other than the trusts on the stock market.”

The Mayan Train is a link in a plan that seeks to integrate the south and southeast of Mexico with Central America, starting with the government’s “Project for the territorial reordering of the south-southeast” and linked to the “Project for the integration and development of Mesoamerica”, which has been modified in appearance but not in substance since the beginning of the 21st century.

Its aim is to link that region to global markets and curb internal and external migration through the construction of megaprojects, the promotion of tourism and the services entailed.

In the 2000s, the government of the southern state of Chiapas fomented “Sustainable Rural Cities”, with aims similar to those of the Mayan Train, and experts argue that the failure of that project should be remembered.

Several underused tracks of the North-South Railway near Anápolis, an industrial city in Brazil that can expand its economy as a logistics hub, thanks to the confluence of rail, road and air transport, together with its proximity to Brasilia. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
ANÁPOLIS, Brazil, Jan 6 2018 (IPS)

The rails have been laid – thousands of km of rails deteriorating due to lack of use, to the despair of those who believe that a country as vast as Brazil can only be developed by means of trains.

Brazil built 37,000 km of railways up to six decades ago, but their use has declined since then. Today about one- third of the network is abandoned and another third is underutilised.

This stands out in the North-South Railway (FNS). Its longest stretch, in Brazil’s geographical centre, was inaugurated in May 2014, but it still does not operate regularly in this country of 8,515,770 square km and 208 million inhabitants.

The 855-km FNS, which runs from the north-central state of Tocantins toAnápolis, 130 km from Brasilia, will be extended by an additional 682 km – a project that is in the final phase of construction and will reach Estrela D’Oeste, in the interior of São Paulo, the most developed state in Brazil.

“It’s a mess, a series of errors and bottlenecks,” according to Edson Tavares, former superintendent of the Anapolis Dry Port and transport consultant. With terminals far from the sea, the FNS depends on more railways to become viable, he told IPS.

The Dry Port is an inland port or multimodal logistics centre or terminal connected to seaports by rail.

The chosen route of the FNS includes “curves that make it necessary to cut in half the intended speed of 80 km per hour” and moves away from busy loading areas such as mines and cement factories, complained the expert, who believes it will take “much more time” for the new railway to take off.

Construction began in 1987 and suffered frequent interruptions and allegations of corruption. The first section, to the north,did not start operating until 2013, and the concession is held by VLI, a logistics company controlled by Vale, the world’s largest exporter of iron ore.

Trucks fill the streets of the Anápolis Agribusiness District, in Brazil, loading or unloading products and raw materials, next to the North-South Railway, which is practically unused, waiting for the concession to be granted to an operator in 2018. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

This 720 km-stretch is able to operate thanks to having “right of passage” through the Carajás Railway, which reaches the Port of São Luis, through which Vale ships iron ore from the Carajás range, in the north of Brazil.

This makes it possible to transport to a port soy and other products from Tocantins, a state in the northern region of Brazil, which contrasts with the other six northern states because only nine percent of its territory is in the Amazon rainforest and the rest in the Cerrado, the Brazilian savanna.

But the southern stretch of the FNS has been left unresolved.

“With the railway operating, Anápolis will become the main logistics centre in Brazil, since it is also the kilometre zero (start) of the Belém-Brasilia highway, crossing two other national roads, and it will have an important cargo airport which in its final phase of construction”, said Vander Barbosa, secretary of Development and Agriculture in the city government.

That city in the state of Goiás also has the most important industrial district in the west-central region of Brazil, with a pharmaceutical hub of 20 companies, a car-making and engine factory run bySouth Korea’s Hyundai and food, beverage and construction materials firms.

Many of these companies produce their own heavy and bulky goods for railway transport. The Granolcompany, for example, processes soybeans and was the first of the few companies that used the new railway to sporadically export their bran.

Since its plant is right next to the rails, it can load the trains through a short pipeline that carries the bran directly to the wagons. Biodiesel is another of its products transportable through the FNS.

A plant belonging to the Granolcompany, which produces soy branand biodiesel, next to the North-South railroad, in Brazil, where a pipeline from the factory makes it possible to load the wagons directly. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Anapolisis also set to be a storage and shipment point of grains for much of the central-west, the region with the highest agricultural production, especially of soy, corn and cotton. For this purpose, the FNS Intermodal terminal still has plenty of available space.

The military defense equipment industry is also strong in the city, which has a strategic air base for the protection of Brasilia, 130 km away as the crow flies.

The idea that transport routes, whether roads or railways, “attract development” does not always automatically come true; “it requires other policies in an integrated manner to generate economic growth,” said Lilian Bracarense, a professor of post-graduate studies in Regional Development at the Federal University of Tocantins.

“The Central-West, North and Northeast regions of Brazil have a lack of infrastructure, but that does not always justify private investments in the sector, as occurs in the South and Southeast, where there is an established demand,” she told IPS.

“The vicious circle that without demand infrastructure is not built, and without infrastructure demand is not generated”, according to the researcher who has a PhD in transport, seems to be broken by the government decision to introduce the railway that runs across the centre of the country from north to south.

Tocantins, with a population of 1.5 million, has an agricultural production limited to about 4.5 million tons of various grains, but the state of Goiás, population 6.8 million, recorded a harvest this year of almost 22 million tons, according to the National Supply Company (Conab) attached to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The idea behind the FNS is to create loading and unloading terminals throughout Goiás, especially in Anápolis due to the importance of industry there, and to attract productive investments as well. But that is where rail transport runs into obstacles.

The city and state of Goiás is more integrated with the economy of the Brazilian Southeast, more developed and closer to the port of Santos, more than 1,000 kilometers away by road, than with the northern ports, which are all at least 1,600 km away.

As a railway without an outlet to the sea, but with an “extensive area of influence”, the North-South railway, and the Brazilian rail system in general, need three conditions to operate satisfactorily, according to José Carlos Medaglia, CEO of the Planning and Logistics Company, attached to the Transport Ministry.

“The right of passage”, which allows logistics operators and a railroad concession company to transport cargo by rail from another company, is already legal but has to be fulfilled in practice, that is the first requirement, Medaglia told IPS.

To be effective, the railways must also have “surplus”transport capacity to provide to third parties, and standardised operation, with rails, equipment, personnel and other uniform technical requirements, of the same level of quality and training, so that they can operate on the railways of other companies, he said.

“All that was unimaginable in the past in Brazil”, which has a tradition of a “vertical” railway system, where the company that holds the concession for the infrastructure is its only operator.

This does not prevent competition, said Medaglia, who added that what is needed in any case is “good regulation,” to enforce the right of passage, and investments to expand capacity and modernise the system.

This can be achieved by negotiating with the country’s five railway networks new operating conditions to extend their concessions that will expire in the coming years.

One of the new locomotives, imported from China to modernise Argentina’s freight railway network, being unloaded in the port of Buenos Aires in May. Credit: Ministry of Transport

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 12 2017 (IPS)

Development in Argentina in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was closely tied to that of the railway. The eighth largest country in the world, Argentina’s economy grew through exporting agricultural and livestock products, and the railways were key to founding centres of population and transporting goods to the ports.

“The railways had an enormous social and cultural impact, and often arrived in areas where there was little or no population. Around the middle of the last century there were 48,000 kilometres of track, at which point the railway system was nationalised as Ferrocarriles Argentinos (Argentine Railways), the largest railway company in the world,” historian Eduardo Lazzari told IPS.

But by 1950, decline had set in. Branch lines were closed and the track network was almost halved, in this country with an area of 2.8 million square kilometres and an estimated population of 43.5 million.

This decline is viewed by some Argentines as a cause, by others as a consequence, but nearly all of them see it as symbolic of the fate of the country, which has suffered countless economic crises in recent decades, and where according to official figures one-third of the population lives in poverty.. “We have to think about what kind of railway we want, because for many years the main problem has not been lack of investment but bad management. It makes no sense to try to go back to the railway system the country once had, because needs have changed." -- Alberto Muller

Argentina now has a recovery plan for the railways, involving investments of billions of dollars and addressing both freight carriage as well as passenger transport in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, where 15.2 million people live, representing 35 percent of the country’s total population.

There are also plans, on a lower key, to renovate intercity rail links in this, the third largest economy of Latin America.

“In the last few years there have been investments on a scale that I have never seen before, especially in the metropolitan railway network. Some of them have not been particularly well planned,” transport expert Alberto Muller, the head of a research centre at the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) told IPS.

Muller voiced the doubts entertained by many experts in the field about the priorities that have been adopted. “We have to think about what kind of railway we want, because for many years the main problem has not been lack of investment but bad management. It makes no sense to try to go back to the railway system the country once had, because needs have changed,” he said.

In 2008 the state began to buy new railway carriages for metropolitan trains, which it had not done since 1985.

The railway sector was privatised in the 1990s as part of the neoliberal reforms undertaken by the government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

The visible deterioration in services and infrastructure began to be reversed in recent years, when the state recovered ownership of the majority of branch lines.

But it took a major tragedy to give the railways top political priority and accelerate investments.

On a Wednesday morning in February 2012 a train carrying 1,200 passengers on the Sarmiento line drove into Once, one of the four main stations in Buenos Aires used daily by thousands of suburban commuters. The brakes failed and it crashed into the buffers..

The crash killed 51 people and led to a trial that riveted the nation and sentenced transport officials and private railway company administrators to prison terms.

In their verdict, the judges determined that the accident had been caused by the “deplorable lack of maintenance that affected safety conditions.”

The weight of public opinion led to 1.2 billion dollars being spent by 2015 to modernise the metropolitan railway lines.

In 2016, in the first year of the government of president Mauricio Macri, an investment plan was announced for nearly 14.2 billion dollars up to 2023. The goal is that trains entering and leaving Buenos Aires should have a daily passenger transport capacity of five million people, compared with their current capacity of 1.2 million passengers.

The plan will be financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), credits from Brazil’s National Development Bank, and contributions from the Argentine Treasury.

Multimillion dollar investments are also planned to modernise the freight railroad network.

China will contribute four billion dollars to the renewal of more than 1,500 kilometres of track in Belgrano Norte and San Martin, carrying freight from the north and west of the country to the ports of Rosario, on the Parana river, and Buenos Aires, on the Rio de la Plata, to be shipped for export.

The agreement includes the purchase of 3,500 railway carriages and 107 locomotives from China.

“The railroad must play a key role in Argentina’s economic recovery,” Transport Minister Guillermo Dietrich said on May 30 upon receiving 10 of the Chinese locomotives.

As for intercity railways, services between Buenos Aires and the city of Mar del Plata were reinaugurated on July 3. The 400 kilometre journey takes nearly seven hours, giving rise to heavy criticism.

A 60-year-old newsreel video, showing the same journey taking four and a half hours, rapidly went viral on the social networks.

“Argentine society has a nostalgic vision of the railroads, and official policies tend to go along with this, which is a mistake. Intercity trains, for example, have little chance of surviving because this is a very large and relatively underpopulated country, and so the costs are too high,” Jorge Wadell, the co-author of “Historia del Ferrocarril en Argentina” (History of the Railroad in Argentina), told IPS.

One of the most important works in progress is laying the Sarmiento line, which was the scene of the 2012 disaster, underground. This railway line connects the centre of the capital with the west of the conurbation, and practically cuts the City of Buenos Aires in two. At present there are dozens of level crossings that are dangerous and complicate rail traffic.

The project has a budget of three billion dollars and involves digging a 22-kilometre long tunnel with tracks for two trains, one in each direction.

The initiative has been on the drawing board for decades and while many people have called for its completion, some experts have criticised the concept.

“At present there are four tracks on the Sarmiento line, but with the tunnel there will only be two, and all the trains will have to stop at all the stations, so there will be no more fast trains. Nowhere in the world is railway capacity being reduced in this way,” the head of the Instituto Ciudad en Movimiento, Andres Borthagaray, told IPS.

The other major project is the Regional Express Network, consisting of the construction of 20 kilometres of tunnels and a network of underground stations to link the different railway lines arriving in Buenos Aires from the suburbs.

Large-scale energy and logistical infrastructure initiatives in Brazil are notorious for their delays. The majority of railways, ports, highways and power plants are several years behind schedule. Credit: Darío Montero/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
NEW YORK, Jun 11 2015 (IPS)

According to new data released by the World Bank Tuesday, investments in infrastructure in 139 emerging economies shot up to 107.5 billion dollars in 2014, with just five countries – Brazil, Colombia, India, Peru and Turkey – accounting for 73 percent of the total.

The update, published by the Bank’s Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) database, reveals that projects with private participation in the water, energy and transport sectors totaled 51.2 billion in the first half of 2014, compared to 41.7 billion in the first half of 2013.

"The concept of ‘appropriate scale’ has been deleted from […] policy discourse because now instead of ‘small is beautiful’, the catchphrase is ‘big is better’.” -- Nancy Alexander, director of the Economic Governance Program at the Heinrich Böll Foundation
Based on a review of investments in some 6,000 projects in 139 low- and middle-income countries between 1990 and 2014, the data show that the energy sector accounted for the greatest number of new projects, but the transport sector captured the largest amount of investment, securing 55.3 billion dollars or 51 percent of the total.

Some 33 road construction projects attracted 28.5 billion dollars in investment, with four of the top five road projects in Brazil and one in Turkey. Five airport projects secured 13.2 billion dollars in investment commitments.

Driven largely by massive infrastructure booms in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, Latin and America and the Caribbean accounted for 55 percent of global investments, snagging 69.1 billion dollars last year.

These mega-projects include 11 major ventures, eight of them in the energy sector, in Peru alone, amounting to over eight billion dollars, the largest of which, the Lima Metro Line 2, brought in 5.3 billion dollars in investment.

Not all regions are seeing an increase. Both India and China experienced declines last year, with the latter witnessing its lowest infrastructure investment levels since 2010, at 2.5 billion dollars. India’s commitments dropped down to 6.2 billion dollars.

In sub-Saharan Africa investment plunged from 9.3 billion in 2013 to 2.6 billion in 2014, although increased infrastructure activity in Ghana, Kenya and Senegal suggests that the downward trend might soon be reversed.

Despite uneven investment levels globally, the Bank estimates that spending on infrastructure projects in 2014 represents 91 percent of the five-year average between 2009 and 2013.

In a statement released on Jun. 9, Bank officials claimed, “This is the fourth highest level of investment commitments ever recorded, exceeded only by levels seen from 2010 through 2012.”

What this data reveals is that a global consensus to bolster public-private partnerships in mega-projects is bearing fruit.

Practically every major international organisation from the United Nations to multilateral development banks believe that strengthening road, energy and transport networks are crucial at a time when one billion people lack access to an all-weather road, 783 million people live without clean water supplies and 1.3 billion people are not connected to an electricity grid.

But a closer look at the track records of these gigantic infrastructure projects and new plans for financing them suggests that pouring billions of dollars into highways and dams in the developing world not only enriches some of the wealthiest sectors of the population, they also threaten to further impoverish the poorest, thereby widening global inequality.

‘Appropriate Scale’ – a thing of the past

The world’s most cited scholar on mega-project management and planning, Bent Flyvbjerg of Oxford University, found that on average only one in 1,000 mega-projects is completed on time, within its stated budget and with the ability to deliver what was promised.

Flyvbjerg’s extensive database on the subject reveals that approximately nine out of every 10 large-scale projects incur cost overruns, often over 50 percent of the stated budget – an expense borne primarily by taxpayers.

According to Nancy Alexander, director of the Economic Governance Program at the Heinrich Böll Foundation, these massive projects can cost “potentially billions and trillions of dollars, so when they go over budget and over time, they can devastate the national budget of a country.”

Alexander told IPS that, while there is a very real need for improved infrastructure, particularly in developing countries, there is an equally urgent need to tailor such ventures towards those who would most benefit from the services.

“Whether they are in education, healthcare, water or electricity, projects really need to be appropriate in scale to meet their goals. But the concept of ‘appropriate scale’ has been deleted from […] policy discourse because now instead of ‘small is beautiful’, the catchphrase is ‘big is better’.”

Part of the reason for this change, experts say, is the push to use investment in infrastructure to finance development, particularly by strengthening public-private partnerships and by ‘financialising’ investment.

Research by the Heinrich Böll Foundation reveals that the G20 group of major economies aims to finance the so-called infrastructure gap by tapping into the roughly 80 trillion dollars in long-term private institutional finance – from pension funds to insurance schemes – by creating infrastructure as an “asset class”.

Under this model, governments will undertake a range of public-private partnerships (PPPs) and financial institutions will package and sell financial products “that offer long-term investors a stake in a portfolio of PPPs”.

“When speculators take stakes in physical infrastructure,” the organisation says, “such infrastructure is subject to the whims of herds of investors [and] could trigger instability in the provision of basic services.”

Already, a lack of evidence on the success of PPPs suggests that the current pace of investment in infrastructure with private participation is at best a gamble – and at worst a recipe for disaster.

In a sample of 128 World Bank-financed public-private partnerships, 67 percent of those in the energy distribution sector failed, as did 41 percent of those in the water sector. These are the findings of the World Bank’s own independent evaluation group (IEG).

Other research indicates that mega-projects seldom lead to improvement in access to basic services, since many such ventures are undertaken to serve global, rather than local, demand.

“Energy projects, for instance, are often launched to serve a mine, or you’ll see a dam or power plant built for the same purpose – as is the case with the Inga Dam in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Alexander explained.

The very countries highlighted in the Bank’s latest update have a poor track record of successfully managing mega-projects.

Large-scale energy and logistical infrastructure initiatives in Brazil, for instance, are notorious for their delays, while the majority of railways, ports, highways and power plants are several years behind schedule.

Meanwhile, back in April, an expose published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed that in the course of a single decade, some 3.4 million people were evicted from their homes, torn away from their lands or otherwise displaced by projects funded by the World Bank.

Fifty percent of those displaced by large-scale ventures – ostensibly aimed at improving water and electricity supplies or beefing up transport and energy networks in some of the world’s most impoverished nations – reside in Africa, or one of three Asian nations: China, India and Vietnam.

The investigators further alleged that the Bank and its private-sector lending arm, the International Finance Corp, pumped 50 billion dollars into projects that financed governments and companies accused of human rights violations.

Brent Blackwelder, president emeritus of Friends of the Earth International, told IPS that “planning bigger and bigger projects despite the failure rate proves what Einstein said: that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Youth ride on a southbound train on the newly laid northern rail track near Mankulam in the northern Kilinochchi District. Built in 1914 with the final aim of linking Sri Lanka with southern India, operations on the line ceased in 1990 before recommencing in late 2013. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct 11 2014 (IPS)

The kids of Kodikaman, a dusty village straddling the newly laid railway line in Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna District, enjoy a special treat these days.

For hours on end, they wait expectantly at the edge of the rails for a track construction engine to pass by; when it nears, they rush to place metal coins on the track and when the trundling vehicle has passed, they run back gleefully to pick up the disfigured money.

This little ritual is just one of many signs that the new line, re-laid here after 24 years, is a big deal all over the Vanni, the northern region of Sri Lanka that bore the brunt of the country’s three-decade-old conflict that ended in May 2009.

Playful children run to the train track in the village of Kodikaman to collect their coins, which they had placed on the rails to be flattened by passing construction engines. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

The last train that plied the line through Kodikaman, some 380 km north of the capital, Colombo, ran on the night of Jun. 13, 1990, when the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) attacked the popular Yal Devi (Jaffna Princess) express.

The Yal Devi had previously been attacked in 1985, also by the Tigers, resulting in reduced train service throughout Sri Lanka’s northern province for almost an entire generation.

So when the first trains to enter the Vanni in over two decades did so in September 2013, school children came out in hordes just to catch a glimpse of the carriages passing through Kilinochichi, the town that was, for over a decade, the Tigers’ de-facto economic and administrative nerve centre.

Workers put the final touches on the main railway station in the northern Sri Lankan town of Jaffna, days before its scheduled opening on Oct. 13. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

“The entire public here is waiting for this dream to come true,” said S L Gupta, project director for IRCON, the government-owned Indian company – a subsidiary of Indian Railways – that is reconstructing 252 km of train links in the Vanni at a cost of 800 million dollars.

The project got off the ground in February 2011 and large sections have already been completed. Trains now ply up to Madhu Road on the northwestern line and up to Pallai, about 17 km south of Jaffna, on the northern line.

On Oct. 13, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa will officially declare open the track all the way to Jaffna.

Mine warning signs keep visitors off the cleared jungle path where the northern railway once ran, near the village of Murukandhi, in the Kilinochchi District of Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

“It will be momentous,” Gupta asserted.

Vadevil Jayakumar, a native of Kilinochchi, agrees with this assessment. He takes the train weekly with his wife, his sister and his young niece.

“It’s cheap, it’s convenient and faster than the bus,” Jayakumar told IPS, riding on the footrest of one of the carriages, his sister and niece occupying the open door at the other end of the train car.

Indeed, a ticket from Colombo all the way up to the Vanni – covering a distance of some 264 km – costs just 180 rupees (about 1.25 dollars). But the novelty of the trains, many say, ends there.

“Very few take the train, they prefer the bus still,” said Nesarathnam Praveen, the 23-year-old stationmaster of the Madhu Road terminus. He says the bulk of his commuters pass through here only when there are festivals at the famous Madhu Church, which attracts thousands from in and outside the province.

On ordinary days, he confesses, this little station lies mostly empty.

Even on the Yal Devi, returning from Colombo on a stifling October afternoon, the bulk of the passengers are government military personnel returning to their posts up north.

A man sleeps in a virtually empty train car as it travels between Kilinochchi and Pallai. The bulk of the passengers on this train, hailing from the capital Colombo, were returning military personnel. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Part of the problem, passengers say, is that trains here don’t run as regularly as they do elsewhere in the country. In fact, the most frequent carriers on the northwestern line are former road buses that have been converted into rail-friendly vehicles that move in pairs along the track.

Trains can’t outstrip poverty

Despite their multi-million-dollar price tag, the new rail links are yet to provide the spark needed to jumpstart the Vanni economy, still in the doldrums despite five years of peace and a massive reconstruction effort in the Northern Province exceeding three billion dollars.

A man on a bicycle watches the Yal Devi pass by near the northern town of Kilinochchi. Despite mega development projects, poverty is still rampant in the region and the bicycle remains one of the main modes of transport. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Poverty is rampant in the region. The poverty headcount in the Mullaitivu District is a national high of 28.8 percent, almost six times the national average of 6.7 percent and 20 times that of the 1.4 percent recorded in the Colombo District.

Other districts in the north are not faring much better: Kilinochchi has a poverty rate of 12.7 percent, Mannar 20.1 percent and Jaffna 8.3 percent.

Only Vavuniya, the southern-most of the five northern districts and the gateway to the rest of the country, is performing well, with a poverty ratio of 3.4 percent.

Unemployment rates follow a similar trend, with Kilinochchi recording a rate of 7.9 percent, nearly double the national average of 4.4 percent, while all districts other than Vavuniya recorded rates higher than the national benchmark.

The primary reason for this, experts say, has been slow job creation. Fishing and agriculture constitute the bulk of the Vanni’s economic activity, but policies aimed at creating markets and bringing in buyers are rare.

Private sector involvement, while on the rise, has not been able to breathe life into an economy repeatedly amputated by the conflict.

Economists blame  a lopsided policy framework, that has poured millions into large infrastructure development without paying adequate attention to revitalising local income generation, for the chronic poverty in the north on

Anushka Wijesinha, economist and policy advisor at the Colombo-based think-tank Institute of Policy Studies, told IPS that if transporting bulk cargo by rail is made cheaper, goods from the Vanni could achieve a more attractive price.

But for the northern railway to become a real purveyor of economic success, more attention, more incentives and more funds need to be directed to the medium- and small-scale Vanni entrepreneur.

“The new transport [line] can certainly boost economic connectivity of businesses in Jaffna and Mannar,” Wijesinha said. “But enterprise policies must focus on helping to grow indigenous businesses in these regions. Otherwise the enhanced connectivity might benefit businesses coming from outside into these regions more than it helps businesses that are already struggling to grow.”

“Policies that improve the business climate, access to finance, technology and business skills will be key,” Wijesinha concluded.

Economist Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, who specialises in the northern economy, told IPS that before the conflict erupted, the northern region brought in the highest per-region revenue to the Railways Department. This was likely due to the fact that the Northern Line was the longest in the country, with 83 station stops.

Sarvananthan, who heads the Point Pedro Institute of Development in Jaffna, emphasised that the government needs to come up with an integrated plan to capitalise on cheaper costs made possible by the railway.

“The Government should incentivise private businesses to set up warehouses adjoining the main railway stations in order to spur cargo trade via railroads,” he stated.

“The re-opening of the rail line to the Northern Province provides healthy competition to road transport services, both cargo and passenger, thereby reducing the transport costs to passengers and businesses alike.

“The resulting reduction in the transaction costs of businesses is likely to benefit consumers by the reduction in prices of consumer goods and services,” he concluded.

If no such integrated plans are made, a familiar refrain will echo in the Vanni, with a large infrastructure project leaving a poverty-stricken community in awe, but in reality no better off than they were before.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Youth ride on a southbound train on the newly laid northern rail track near Mankulam in the northern Kilinochchi District. Built in 1914 with the final aim of linking Sri Lanka with southern India, operations on the line ceased in 1990 before recommencing in late 2013. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct 10 2014 (IPS)

The kids of Kodikaman, a dusty village straddling the newly laid railway line in Sri Lanka’s northern Jaffna District, enjoy a special treat these days.

For hours on end, they wait expectantly at the edge of the rails for a track construction engine to pass by; when it nears, they rush to place metal coins on the track and when the trundling vehicle has passed, they run back gleefully to pick up the disfigured money.

This little ritual is just one of many signs that the new line, re-laid here after 24 years, is a big deal all over the Vanni, the northern region of Sri Lanka that bore the brunt of the country’s three-decade-old conflict that ended in May 2009.

The last train that plied the line through Kodikaman, some 380 km north of the capital, Colombo, ran on the night of Jun. 13, 1990, when the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) attacked the popular Yal Devi (Jaffna Princess) express.

The project got off the ground in February 2011 and large sections have already been completed. Trains now ply up to Madhu Road on the northwestern line and up to Pallai, about 17 km south of Jaffna, on the northern line.

On Oct. 13, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa will officially declare open the track all the way to Jaffna.

“It will be momentous,” Gupta asserted.

Indeed, a ticket from Colombo all the way up to the Vanni – covering a distance of some 264 km – costs just 180 rupees (about 1.25 dollars). But the novelty of the trains, many say, ends there.

Despite its multi-million-dollar price tag, the new rail-line is yet to provide the spark needed to jumpstart the Vanni economy, still in the doldrums despite five years of peace and a massive reconstruction effort in the Northern Province exceeding three billion dollars.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

The latest railway tragedy in the Argentine capital, the third in less than two years on the same commuter line, brought to light the severe limitations of a hybrid public-private system, despite the changes underway.

Thursday’s collision, which killed three people and injured over 300, occurred when a commuter train on the suburban Sarmiento line crashed into a train that had stopped near the station in Castelar, on the west side of the city of Buenos Aires.

Interior and Transport Minister Florencio Randazzo said the packed train had undergone repairs and had a new brake system. He suggested that the conductor, who was detained pending investigation, may have been speeding.

Last year, the centre-left government of Cristina Fernández launched a plan for investment and greater state involvement in the metropolitan railway network, after two serious accidents on the Sarmiento line, which links the centre of Buenos Aires with the western suburbs, and was previously run autonomously by a private firm.

The first accident happened in September 2011, when a bus crossed the tracks in front of an oncoming train. The barriers were down but the driver presumably thought they were stuck, as they often were. The train, which crashed into the bus, was derailed and was hit by a train approaching from the other direction. The accident left 11 dead and 212 injured.

And in February 2012, a commuter train slammed into a retaining wall at a railway terminus in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Once, killing 51 people and leaving over 700 injured.

After that tragedy, the Fernández administration withdrew the concession from the Cometrans consortium, and as an emergency measure created a new management unit with two private operators that were already running the other suburban lines.

The new unit runs the Sarmiento line under supervision and orders from the state, which now has greater decision-making authority and control and can levy fines that are automatically discounted from the private companies in case of infractions or breach of contract.

The centre-right government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) privatised Argentina’s railways in the early 1990s, awarding the concessions to private companies. The contracts were renegotiated over and over again, while the quality of the railway services took a nosedive due to a lack of investment, maintenance and upgrading.

Nevertheless, the state coffers continue to shell out an average of 3.8 billion dollars a year in subsidies to keep fares down; 25 percent of that total goes to the six commuter lines serving the suburbs of Buenos Aires.

“There have been changes recently. Some things have improved. But Randazzo isn’t a magician, he’s a minister,” Norberto Rosendo, the president of the Comisión Nacional Salvemos al Tren (Save the Train National Commission), told IPS.

Rosendo was an engineer for Ferrocarriles Argentinos, the state-run company that ran the railways up to the 1990s.

“Improvements have been delayed for more than 20 years, since the railways were privatised and systematic maintenance stopped being carried out. And the outsourcing of repairs doesn’t work,” he said.

Rosendo was referring to the system under which the state hands over the parts to be repaired to Emprendimientos Ferroviarios SA, of Cometrans, which was removed as operator of the Sarmiento and Mitre lines after the February 2012 catastrophe in Once.

The owners of Cometrans and roughly two dozen former government officials are facing charges of criminal negligence and fraudulent administration in relation to the accident.

According to Rosendo, the government could have expropriated the Emprendimientos Ferroviarios SA repair workshop, which employs some 400 workers.

Gradually moving back into state hands

“Why isn’t a state-run company directly set up?” he complained. “I believe it’s because it would reduce the opportunities for corruption, since a state-owned firm has to be held accountable, but third parties are more difficult to control.”

The expert clarified that he was not making an accusation against the minister, who he had no reason to believe was part of a network of corruption, but was criticising the system itself.

“They should move towards total nationalisation, with participation by workers and users,” he recommended. “That is the kind of company that is needed, one that is held to account, that has its own repair shops, that doesn’t have to pay others to fix things or commission new carriages from China.”

Randazzo had announced a contract with Chinese companies for the production of carriages that would mean the complete renovation of the trains on the Sarmiento and Mitre lines in 2014.

The trains that are now running are 50 years old and are subject to continuous repairs. “They have to be thrown out as junk,” Rosendo said.

Users of the system also have complaints and suggestions. VIAS (Verificación Informativa y Auditoría Social) is a group of people who use the railway system in Argentina and carry out surveys and post photos to document complaints on Facebook.

In recent months, improvements have been reported, such as the reopening of bathrooms in train stations, more flagmen, and different safety measures.

But trains are still delayed, there are still doors that don’t close, and there are even risks of electrocution.

Carlos de Luca is one of the activists with the Frente de Usuarios Desesperados del Sarmiento, a movement of users of the Sarmiento line that in the years before the accidents was collecting signatures and protesting the often appalling conditions in the trains.

Although the movement’s complaints did not help prevent the tragedies, they did serve as information and evidence in the lawsuit over the February 2012 catastrophe, he told IPS.

“My wife was pregnant, and I used to go meet her at the station because she was scared. One day she fell. Incredible things happened in Sarmiento, like people who would return home barefoot” because they had lost their shoes in the daily crush.

“Today we are in anguish over this new accident, but I believe that something is changing since the state took over responsibility,” he said.

“The thing is, the changes can’t be seen overnight, as you would like, but we see there is a will to improve things,” he said. “What we have always been asking is for the state to take charge.”