Mexico City presents US$1bn public works plan for 2024

Mexico City plans to carry out a 19.5bn-peso (US$1.1bn) public works program this year.

Key categories of the program are sustainability, public spaces, road infrastructure and mobility, Forbes México reported.

“Among the most prominent works are, for example, projects that we are executing with the federal government like Chapultepec: Nature and Culture, El Insurgente interurban train,” mayor Martí Batres Guadarrama was quoted as saying.

“Mobility continues to be a priority for us and we have the trolleybus on Aztecas avenue that crosses the Coyoacán rocky grounds, and the re-leveling of metro line No. 9,” he added. 

Local works and services minister Jesús Antonio Esteva Medina said that the sustainability category focuses on waste management and includes 126mn pesos to finish a waste treatment plant, maintain four waste transferring stations and the San Juan de Aragón waste complex, and a composting plant.

Another 360mn pesos will be used to rehabilitate 91 schools in 13 districts and to build the second stage of Universidad de la Salud, while 93mn pesos are earmarked for fire station maintenance, according to Esteva.

Urban works are part of the public spaces category and will get 300mn pesos, including the rehabilitation of 77 roads and installing lighting in all districts and adapting the city’s main square for pedestrians.

Mobility works involve 520mn pesos for bridge maintenance and new ones, and for links between transit systems. In addition, 240mn pesos will be used to advance the construction of the 7.3km Aztecas trolleybus line between Taxqueña and Perisur that will serve 15 stations, said Esteva.

Some 150mn pesos will be used to maintain metrobus lanes, 600mn pesos for tunnel works and to expand metro line No. 12, 170mn pesos to re-level metro line No. 9, and 5.8bn pesos to finish the construction of El Insurgente interurban train. 

The investment in line No. 12 “will enable us to move forward with more rigorous building processes. We will finish those 90m that are missing to complete the tunnel this year, as well as the connection from Mixcoac to Observatorio.”

Some 1.3bn pesos will be invested jointly with the federal government to build line No. 3 of the Chapultepec cablecar, roads in the fourth section of Chapultepec forest to connect with Constituyentes avenue, and other works.