Mexico has launched four rail projects as part of its six-year rail development plan.

The first to start will be a 220km link between Mexico City and the industrial hub of Querétaro to the northwest.

This route acquired some notoriety after a previous government hired a Chinese-Mexican consortium to build it in 2014, but later cancelled the project over cost concerns.

This version of the link is expected to cost $7.6bn and to serve 5.6 million passengers a year.

There will also be a 110km line running from Querétaro due east to Irapuato, and a 64km line between Felipe Ángeles International Airport, which is north of Mexico City, and Pachuca in Hidalgo State.

The fourth link will run for 300km between Saltillo and Nuevo Laredo in east–central Mexico. This is intended to ease severe road congestion caused by rapid urbanisation in the region.

Andrés Lajous, head of Mexico’s federal rail agency, said on X that the projects had been selected based on projected demand.

The government of Claudia Scheinbaum has a six-year plan to invest $58bn in 5,645km of railway across 24 of Mexico’s 32 states.

Investment in the sector is expected to reach $8.1bn in 2025 alone.

The Pachuca and Querétaro projects are already live, and both are expected to complete in 2027. Tendering for the others will begin next month with a view to awarding contracts in July.

The Pachuca and Querétaro lines are being built by the Felipe Ángeles Engineering Group, which is owned by the Ministry of Defence.

The projects follow the successful completion of the Tren Maya line in December. This epic 1,540km project took four years to build and is thought to have cost somewhere between $20bn and $25bn.