Que rapido! China to build Mexico's first bullet train

A Chinese corporation has won the rights to build a USD3.7 billion high-speed train line in central Mexico, which will be the country's first foray into the world of bullet trains.

The line will connect Mexico City, the country's capital, to the industrial city of Queretaro. Running at a speed of 300km/h, the full route will take just 58 minutes: today, it takes more than two and a half hours. If all goes according to plan, the line will carry some 23,000 passengers per day.

China's Exim Bank will finance some 85% of the construction costs, and construction will be done by the China Railway Construction Corporation, in cooperation with local firms and Mexico's Ministry of Communications and Transport. To get the contract, the Chinese corporation out-bid competing entries from, among others, Japan's Mitsubishi and Germany's Siemens.

If all goes well, there are already talks that this could just be the first of several Mexican high-speed rails constructed with Chinese support.