Chile’s president announces rail development plan to triple passengers by 2026

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – “Chile deserves to recover its railway tradition,” said President Gabriel Boric on Wednesday during his first appearance before Congress two and a half months after his inauguration on March 11, projecting to triple the number of passengers by 2026.

According to the president, his railway development project “reflects the historical cross-cutting desire of millions of people: to have a broad network of trains for Chile”.

Boric highlighted this point in his transportation and connectivity proposal for the southern country, which is 4,500 km long from north to south and has only a few hundred kilometers of railway lines.

Transportation in Chile is mainly done through the long highways that run almost the entire country from north to south or, in the case of cargo, mainly through naval access between its ports.

“This plan contemplates deploying urban and suburban passenger services and gradually advancing in the construction of medium and long-distance inter-regional passenger services. It also contemplates new infrastructure for cargo services and raises the standard of quality in its current operations,” Boric said.

The president indicated that the goal is to triple the current 50 million passengers using the train as a means of transport by 2019 to reach 150 million by 2026.

Although he did not delve into the details of the different projects, which will be publicly available on the government’s website, he did point out that work has already begun on the project to link Santiago and Valparaíso by rail, one of the most frequented routes by the millions of inhabitants of the capital and the port city.

These are the two most populated urban areas in Chile and account for almost half of the country’s 19 million inhabitants.

With information from AFP