High-Speed Train to Link Mexico City, Guadalajara

Mexico will open bidding on a $12 billion bullet train project to link the capital with the country´s second-largest city, Guadalajara.

The bidding is expected to begin by early 2006 after a feasibility study is completed, Transportation Secretary Pedro Cerisola said Wednesday.

The train would reduce travel times on a 375-mile route that would also hook up the central Mexico cities of Queretaro, Irapuato and Leon.

Mexico City was left without passenger trains in 2001 for the first time in 127 years. Work is now scheduled on a suburban commuter rail line.

Most national passenger runs were quietly canceled in 1999 following decades of mismanagement of the state-owned passenger rail service. Mexican trains carried 37.4 million passengers a year at their peak in the 1970s.