Mexican president wants to force private freight rail companies to schedule passenger service

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president has announced he will require private concessionary railway companies to offer passenger service. If the companies refuse, the government will schedule its own trains on tracks that are currently used almost exclusively to carry freight. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has denied any notion that his decree, to be issued later this month, amounts to an expropriation of private property. He says that existing law guarantees passenger trains priority. However, almost no regular passenger service remains since a 1995 reform, which gave concessions to two private railway companies — Mexico’s Ferromex and a subsidiary of U.S. railway Kansas City Southern.