Skip to main content

Work to begin on Mexico City airport

Work on the new US$12.9 billion Mexico City international airport is scheduled to begin next month, according to Gerardo Ruiz, head of Mexico's transport and communications ministry SCT. Initial works include involve soil improvement, road connectivity and water infrastructure works. Water-related issues on the site could present the greatest challenge to the airport project, as the area is presently used as a buffer zone where excess rainwater from storms is diverted to the land to ease the capital's d
September 10, 2014 Read time: 2 mins

Work on the new US$12.9 billion Mexico City international airport is scheduled to begin next month, according to Gerardo Ruiz, head of Mexico's transport and communications ministry SCT. Initial works include involve soil improvement, road connectivity and water infrastructure works.

Water-related issues on the site could present the greatest challenge to the airport project, as the area is presently used as a buffer zone where excess rainwater from storms is diverted to the land to ease the capital's drainage capacity. Water infrastructure works to reduce the risk of flooding will require US$1.2 billion, according to the SCT airport financing plan.

Construction of the airport is expected to take between four and six years.

The new terminal will have six runways. Three runways will be built in the first phase to handle 50 million passengers annually, with the passenger count rising to 120 million passengers annually at the end of the second phase.

Related Content

  • Authorities play the parking ticket
    April 10, 2014
    Having long been a cause of contention with their constituents, local authorities are now using parking provision to entice shoppers and reduce congestion. To say that parking, and particularly parking enforcement, is a contentious and emotive issue is something of an understatement. Across the globe the discontentment with parking facilities, charges and enforcement is a major cause of friction between local authorities and the residents, businesses and drivers in the area. Recently there was outrage in
  • Lagos to get mass transit system
    February 5, 2013
    Lagos, Nigeria, is about to get a mass transit system with a difference, which the manufacturer says will play its part in reducing congestion and air pollution in the city. For the first time in the country’s history of Nigeria, a cable car company, Ropeways Transport, is set to launch a cable car mass urban transit system in the nation’s commercial capital. Under the terms of a thirty-year franchise agreement between Ropeways Transport, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) and the Lag
  • Nairobi looks to ITS to ease travel problems
    December 21, 2017
    Shem Oirere looks at plans to tackle chronic congestion in the Kenyan capital. Traffic jams in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, are estimated to cost the country $360 million a year in terms of lost man-hours, fuel and pollution. According to Wilfred Oginga, an engineer with the Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA), the congestion has been exacerbated by poor regulation and enforcement of traffic rules, absence of adequate traffic management systems and poor utilisation of existing road facilities.
  • How can US transportation be ‘re-envisioned’?
    October 17, 2019
    In her address to this year’s ITS America Annual Meeting, congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, chair of the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, called for a ‘re-envisioning’ of transportation. Her speech is below – and ITS International asks a number of US experts what they would like to see ‘re-envisioned’…

    I would like to welcome  ITS America to the nation’s capital.