A reality check for the Maya Train: Without cargo service, it will keep losing money

The Maya Train has lone been afloat operational for 5 months and already questions astir its profitability person been raised. The latest doubts travel not from the project’s innumerable critics, but from the manager of the railway.

Gen. Óscar David Lozano — the wide manager of the Maya Train — raised eyebrows earlier this period erstwhile helium admitted to the Mexican Association of Railroads (AMF) that the Maya Train volition not crook a nett unless cargo trains are added to the project.

Óscar Lozano Águila, manager wide of the Maya Train, shown present with Tourism Minister Josefina Rodríguez Zamora, has made wide his content that nary bid endeavor successful the satellite tin marque a nett without offering freight service. (Daniel Augusto/ Cuartoscuro)

In fact, a time earlier, Lozano had confirmed that the Maya Train operated astatine a important nonaccomplishment successful 2024. The state-owned railway was US $133 cardinal successful the red, bringing successful lone 275 cardinal pesos (US $14 million) from passengers and souvenir sales. That magnitude represented a specified 9.6% of revenues needed to interruption even

Billed arsenic a tourism mega-project, the 1,554-km Maya Train railway was built astatine a outgo of astir 500 cardinal pesos (US $24.8 billion), astir 4 times much than primitively estimated.

On Dec. 15, 2024, President Claudia Sheinbaum inaugurated the last 2 sections of the bid that traverses the Yucatán Peninsula, declaring it afloat operational and calling it “one of the large legacies” of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Early past month, authorities celebrated the train’s one-millionth passenger, portion acknowledging that ridership had been good down the government’s targeted numbers.

Perhaps not coincidentally, authorities were already contemplating adapting the railway for cargo transport. 

In mid-March, Sheinbaum officially announced plans to nexus the ports of Progreso, Yucatán, and Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, to stimulate commerce successful the region. Trunk lines volition link the ports — some connected the Gulf of Mexico broadside of the peninsula — to the Maya Train tracks.

The authorities hopes to adhd 700 kilometers of way to accommodate cargo trains by 2026, citing an archetypal fund of 38 cardinal pesos (US $1.98 billion). The extremity is for the railway to interruption adjacent by 2030.

Lozano had qualified his informing astir the train’s deficiency of profitability by telling the AMF that no railroad task successful the satellite tin expect to crook a profit by solely relying connected rider service. 

Although ridership has been connected the emergence — up 181% successful the archetypal 4th of 2025 compared to the aforesaid play successful 2024 — the Maya Train was not proving to beryllium the tourer attraction primitively envisioned.

The stated extremity of the task was to supply proscription for 3 cardinal tourists each year, a task made much problematic by the deficiency of connectivity betwixt the bid stations and the tourer attractions it purports to serve.

According to official figures cited by El Financiero, lone six of each 100 passengers connected the bid since operations began successful December 2023 were overseas tourists. 

Data compiled done May 13 indicated that conscionable implicit 77,000 passengers were foreigners, astir fractional of them from the U.S. This factors retired to conscionable 149 planetary tourists each day, a fig which pales successful examination to the estimated 20 cardinal overseas visitors that arrived successful Cancún past year. 

Furthermore, authorities person recovered that one-fourth of each overseas tourists riding the Maya Train utilized it exclusively to question from Mérida to Cancún, a region of little than one-fifth of the full magnitude of the obstruction system.

With reports from El Financiero, Infobae and Yucatán Magazine