MEXICO CITY — The pet rail project of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador could wind up costing as much as US$30 billion, is only half finished as he heads into the final months of his term, and has wreaked major damage on the environment. But the most damning judgments on the Maya Train tourist line, which runs in a loop around the Yucatan Peninsula, are the ridership figures on about half the railway that is now open: only about 1,200 people per day use the train, according to government figures released Monday. Most ride it only on short stretches between the city of Merida and Cancun, or the nearby city of Campeche.
The big hope for paying the train’s massive cost was that tourists would use it to depart from the resort of Cancun and explore the whole 1,500-kilometre route to visit the Mayan archaeological sites that dot the peninsula. But a roundtrip route from Cancun to the well-known Mayan temple complex of Palenque has drawn only about 100 passengers per day each way in the first six months of operation. That is a volume that a bus or two per day could handle far more cheaply.
The government had originally promised the train would carry between 22,000 and 37,000 people per day. Current ridership is about 3-5% of that, with three of the four most popular stations — Cancun, Merida, Palenque and Campeche — already in service. Admittedly, the rail line down the heavily traveled corridor linking Cancun and the resorts of Playa del Carmen and Tulum — an area.