PULSE NEWS MEXICO

Just one day after an elderly man lost a finger due to a Mexico City (CDMX) metro car closing on his hand, the daily Mexican newspaper Reforma reported on Sunday, Feb. 5, that, of 390 existing fleet of trains in the CDMX Metro system, 107 are out of service and that their parts are being cannibalized to repair other cars, according to a report from researcher Miriam Sosa Castro at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM).

“Only 73 percent of the trains are in working order, and the rest have had parts removed for use in other trains,” said Sosa Castro.

She added that of the cars that do function, about 75 percent are in need of constant maintenance due to their age.

And while the useful life of a metro train is about 30 years, Sosa Castro said that some of the trains still being used are 53 years old.

This, Sosa Castro said, leads to the capital’s public transportation capacity to be insufficient.

“All this has resulted in lower service capacity and a substantial increase in metro failures, generating constant delays,” she said.

Based on official Metro reports, 22,195 metro failures are registered each year, which impact up to 29 percent on passenger trips.

For each failure, Sosa Castro estimated that 25,075 people lose up to five minutes, a cost that is passed on to the city government as delays accumulate.