MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico's government said Tuesday that a loose rail attachment derailed a train on the presidential presidential pet project, a tourist rail line known as the Maya Train.
The March 25 derailment was an embarrassment for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who considers the $20 billion railroad one of his signature construction projects. There were no injuries in this accident.
Critics say the project, which would orbit the Yucatan Peninsula, is wasteful and environmentally damaging. But some have expressed concern about the rush of construction. López Obrador hopes to have it finished before he leaves office on September 30th.
Explaining the issue, Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said that the railway switch involved in the accident would eventually be designed to be operated automatically.
Automated systems are not yet in place, but the president wanted to get some of the lines up and running anyway. Therefore, a switch that diverts a train's cars onto another track must be manually loosened, moved, and returned to its original position.
In one of those surgeries, someone probably didn't retighten the fitting.
“It turns out that this clamp was not tightened properly,” Sandoval said.
He said Alstom, the company that manufactured the train, and Asvindi, the company that built that section of the railway line, were “analyzing and considering the damages” caused by the accident.
President López Obrador ordered construction on the jungle-spanning project despite warnings from activists that it would damage the Yucatan Peninsula's fragile limestone caves.
The president promised to build an elevated railway platform to avoid destroying the cave, but concrete and steel piles to support it were driven directly into the cave.
In March, activists released photos showing steel and cement piles driven directly into the roof of the cave.
A network of caves, sunken lakes and underground rivers along Mexico's Caribbean coast is environmentally sensitive and has been found to contain some of North America's oldest human remains.
The flat limestone peninsula has no surface rivers, making it the region's only source of fresh water.
About 10,000 years ago, the cave was dry, so humans and animals used it and basically left the ruins undisturbed before it was largely flooded at the end of the last ice age about 8,000 years ago. I prevented it.
In December, President López Obrador inaugurated another partially completed section of the Northern and Eastern Railway between Cancun and the colonial city of Campeche.
The 950-mile line runs in a rough loop around the Yucatan Peninsula and is intended to connect beach resorts and archaeological sites.
Part of the train will be built by Mexico's military, making it the largest project Mr López Obrador has commissioned from Mexico's military in at least 100 years.
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