New Metro Line Opens in Mexico City

Mexico City has opened metro line 12, known as the Gold Line, a 25km subway route that passes through 20 stations.

The Gold Line, which connects Tláhuac with Mixcoac and lines 8, 2, 3 and 7, will remove around 860 buses from the city’s congested traffic system.
Construction of the new line cost MX$24.5bn ($1.9bn), of which the Mexican government contributed MX$7.5bn ($573m), while MXN5.7bn ($435m) came from local contributions.
Civil works for the project were undertaken by Mexico’s ICA and Carso, while Alstom provided 1-5 kV DC overhead electrification, signalling and control systems, and installed its Urbalis communications-based train control (CBTC) system that allows automatic operation.
Alstom was responsible for train control, signalling, centralised control, passenger information, telecommunications, power distribution and catenary for the project.
Spain’s Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) supplied 30 seven-car Type FE-10 steel-wheel trains under a €1bn 15-year deal awarded in December 2009, which also included managing the line and overseeing the maintenance of the trains.
With the new line, Mexico City’s current metro system spans 226km with 12 lines and 195 stations, serving about 4.5 million people per day.
The new line is expected to transport from 400,000 to 500,000 passengers a day, as well as reduce average commuter times from 150 minutes to 78 minutes.
The Gold Line is expected to cut the city’s CO2 emissions by around 22,000t per year.