Pima County officials are in talks with Mexican authorities, state officials and members of Congress about potentially bringing Mexican passenger rail to Tucson.
Mexico is in the process of building hundreds of miles of passenger rail, including sections of high-speed rail. When completed, the system will include more than 3,000 kilometers of rail across 24 states.
Current proposals for Phase 3 of the project have the northern terminus of the route in Nogales, Sonora, near the U.S.-Mexico border.
The possibility of accessing a complex rail network at the southern border piqued the interest of local authorities, such as Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz.
“If they can do 700-plus miles of track, we've got to be able to figure out how to do 63 from the border up to the Tucson area,” Heinz said.
Discussions occurred at a Pima Association of Governments meeting on January 19 after local authorities were given a presentation by Álvaro Madrigal, director general of the Mexican railroad agency.
Participants of the meeting included the mayors of five cities as well as leaders from the Pascua Yaqui and Tohono O'odham tribes, the head consul of Mexico in Tucson, ADOT, and congressional staffers from Rep. Adelita Grijalva and Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego.
While there is no official proposal to consider, Heinz said he has received a lot of positive feedback from the January meeting.
“We are equally excited for the possibility of passenger rail throughout Mexico that will connect the United States, especially Tucson and Nogales, to Mexico,” said Tucson Mayor Regina Romero at the meeting.
Romero said trains have functioned from Nogales before. She said she has taken historic tourism trains like the Chepe Express from Nogales to Mazatlán and Copper Canyon.
Romero said her biggest interest is continuing to cultivate tourism and economic development opportunities back and forth between Mexico and Arizona.
“Mexico is moving, and are we ready for it?” said Tohono O'odham Chairman Verlon Jose at the meeting.
Jose said they need to develop a long-term plan because people and administrations come and go.
“We got to take the politics out of it and put the business sense on in order to make this happen,” Jose said. “Because I think it is a win-win situation.”
Heinz said it’s important to start discussions early because planning infrastructure takes time.
“It does take quite a long time to get these things done,” Heinz said. “It's so important for us to start really aggressively advocating for that, so that we aren't five, 10, 15 years behind where our neighbor and friends to the south is.”
Heinz said this is the best opportunity for passenger rail he has ever examined because Mexico is doing a vast majority of the work.
“This is not some sort of pie in the sky, maybe this could happen. Like, they are doing this,” Heinz said. “And when we see this kind of investment in infrastructure, which we know, certainly on this side of the border, trains, infrastructure take many years to plan.”
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