Maya Train: underground tunnel or 9-meter high overpass?

Fonatur does not rule out that the Maya Train circulates below ground level in the section from La Plancha to Fraccionamiento Los Héroes de Mérida.

The director of the National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism (Fonatur), Rogelio Jiménez Pons, stated that it has not been ruled out that the Mayan Train could run from La Plancha to Fraccionamiento Los Héroes in an underground tunnel, but it is also being analyzed that it could be elevated, at nine meters high, and the option that is chosen will have a lot to do with the budget issue.

The federal official said that the part of the route that reaches the crossing with Periférico would necessarily have to be underground because there is already an overpass that is impossible to cross overhead and the locomotive could not pass at ground level due to its dimensions.

“With state-of-the-art technology, tunnels are built in other parts of the world that go under the sea”, the official said.

“The main problem we have here is economic, because of course the options of going up or down are more expensive, but we are analyzing the options”, he stated.

He explained that the project that is being analyzed is practically the same one that UN-Habitat presented and that it is in the process of updating the Mérida Urban Development Program, without major changes.

Jiménez Pons said that the issue still being analyzed is whether the work will run at ground level, underground, or 9 meters above the ground. 

Jiménez Pons concluded that “there are already some proposals, but that they still have to be put to the consideration of the President of the Republic”.