News / Mexican rail freight ambitions could provide Panama Canal alternative

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Notwithstanding a huge focus on passenger rail, a plan to run trains with freight, connecting Mexico’s Pacific coast with the Gulf of Mexico, is garnering interest as a possible alternative to the Panama Canal.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president, has a soft spot for trains – passenger ones, to be precise. The first solid manifestation of this has been the Mayan Train, a 1,554 km intercity line that traverses the Yucatan peninsula, which he proposed in 2018.

More recently, the president ...