Recapping RailtecMéxico: grown-up growth
The city of Monterrey has changed a lot since 2002, the last time RailtecMéxico was held at Centro Internacional de Negocios Monterrey (CINTERMEX).
New developments — housing complexes, industrial parks, parks proper, a river walk — dot the stretch of highway from Monterrey Airport to CINTERMEX, which is part of Parque Fundidora, a multiuse development comprising an ex-steel mill that was converted into an industrial museum/race track/amusement park/gathering place. Six years ago, this “park” was still pretty industrial and anything but idyllic. On a late-January Sunday afternoon, Parque Fundidora was brimming with strollers, skateboarders and other recreating citizens of the so-called “Sultan of the North.” Home to 4 million-plus and counting, this city has “really grown up” during the past decade, as one Monterreyan told me.
So has Mexico’s railroad industry, which was on display in all its evolutionary glory at the ninth iteration of Railtec. Held Jan. 27-29, the event was presented by Asociacion Mexicana de Empresas Ferrocarrileras A.C. and co-sponsored by Progressive Railroading.
The rail evolution hasn’t been lost on the Monterrey media, which swarmed not only the Mexican government officials and other dignitaries in attendance, but the rail execs, as well. With notebooks and digital recorders in hand, newspaper, television and online services reporters pressed rail officials for details on the spending plans they’d just unveiled (see “Recapping RailtecMéxico: a few capex details”), trackage rights tussles (“They’re trying to make something out of nothing,” one rail official said of the long-simmering Ferromex-Kansas City Southern de México feud — if they’re stirring it up, you know you’ve arrived) and rail safety.
The latter topic hadn’t been discussed much at past events. But during Railtec’s opening session, rail execs had talked up their safety accomplishments, thereby inviting the scrutiny. That they’d emphasized safety at all — and, in turn, knowingly encouraged the questions — was new, refreshingly so. It prompted one supplier to wonder aloud if they’d soon begin to talk about environmental improvements. Probably not. “We’re not there yet,” one freight exec told me. “But, you know, we will be someday.”
Publicly, optimism has always been an undercurrent at Railtec, as well as within railroads’ corporate offices. The underlying message: “We’re here, we’re part of the North American rail system and we’ll get better — you’ll see.” So railroaders seemed pleased when AAR President & CEO Ed Hamberger, in his Jan. 28 luncheon keynote, said he saw what they saw.
“We are part of the North American marketplace,” he said, adding that it had never been more apparent that railroads in Mexico, Canada and the United States were facing the same issues – that they were on better-service and safety-improvement quests and, at varying degrees, working to “react and inter-react with different levels of government.”
And vice versa. Other links in Mexico’s transport chain, notably the ports, now recognize the need to partner more productively, and publicly, with rail. In a standing-room-only Jan. 29 panel discussion, General Coordinator of Mexico’s Ports and Merchant Navy César Patricio Reyes Roel called the session the “first exchange of ideas” between the ports and rails.
“Railroads are our national ally,” he said. “The first step is talking, and that is why we are here.”
And talk, they did. The discussion — which ranged from rethinking supply-chain processes to improving port-related rail infrastructure to figuring out how to cope with more intense container scrutiny at the U.S.-Mexican border — continued long after the session ended.
Real dialogue is real growth, and it was heartening to see (and hear).
New developments — housing complexes, industrial parks, parks proper, a river walk — dot the stretch of highway from Monterrey Airport to CINTERMEX, which is part of Parque Fundidora, a multiuse development comprising an ex-steel mill that was converted into an industrial museum/race track/amusement park/gathering place. Six years ago, this “park” was still pretty industrial and anything but idyllic. On a late-January Sunday afternoon, Parque Fundidora was brimming with strollers, skateboarders and other recreating citizens of the so-called “Sultan of the North.” Home to 4 million-plus and counting, this city has “really grown up” during the past decade, as one Monterreyan told me.
So has Mexico’s railroad industry, which was on display in all its evolutionary glory at the ninth iteration of Railtec. Held Jan. 27-29, the event was presented by Asociacion Mexicana de Empresas Ferrocarrileras A.C. and co-sponsored by Progressive Railroading.
The rail evolution hasn’t been lost on the Monterrey media, which swarmed not only the Mexican government officials and other dignitaries in attendance, but the rail execs, as well. With notebooks and digital recorders in hand, newspaper, television and online services reporters pressed rail officials for details on the spending plans they’d just unveiled (see “Recapping RailtecMéxico: a few capex details”), trackage rights tussles (“They’re trying to make something out of nothing,” one rail official said of the long-simmering Ferromex-Kansas City Southern de México feud — if they’re stirring it up, you know you’ve arrived) and rail safety.
The latter topic hadn’t been discussed much at past events. But during Railtec’s opening session, rail execs had talked up their safety accomplishments, thereby inviting the scrutiny. That they’d emphasized safety at all — and, in turn, knowingly encouraged the questions — was new, refreshingly so. It prompted one supplier to wonder aloud if they’d soon begin to talk about environmental improvements. Probably not. “We’re not there yet,” one freight exec told me. “But, you know, we will be someday.”
Publicly, optimism has always been an undercurrent at Railtec, as well as within railroads’ corporate offices. The underlying message: “We’re here, we’re part of the North American rail system and we’ll get better — you’ll see.” So railroaders seemed pleased when AAR President & CEO Ed Hamberger, in his Jan. 28 luncheon keynote, said he saw what they saw.
“We are part of the North American marketplace,” he said, adding that it had never been more apparent that railroads in Mexico, Canada and the United States were facing the same issues – that they were on better-service and safety-improvement quests and, at varying degrees, working to “react and inter-react with different levels of government.”
And vice versa. Other links in Mexico’s transport chain, notably the ports, now recognize the need to partner more productively, and publicly, with rail. In a standing-room-only Jan. 29 panel discussion, General Coordinator of Mexico’s Ports and Merchant Navy César Patricio Reyes Roel called the session the “first exchange of ideas” between the ports and rails.
“Railroads are our national ally,” he said. “The first step is talking, and that is why we are here.”
And talk, they did. The discussion — which ranged from rethinking supply-chain processes to improving port-related rail infrastructure to figuring out how to cope with more intense container scrutiny at the U.S.-Mexican border — continued long after the session ended.
Real dialogue is real growth, and it was heartening to see (and hear).
Posted by: 
Pat Foran | Date posted: 2/12/2008 4:08:00 PM
