The head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, pointed out this Monday that the train crash on Line 3 of the metro that caused the death of a young woman and left a hundred injured on Saturday was "essentially" due to " operational problems”.
However, Sheinbaum has indicated that "no hypothesis is closed" and that the Prosecutor's Office will give more information soon.
"We have to wait for the investigation," she told the press during a tour of the affected area.
The trains have already been removed from the tracks and the section "has been repaired," according to the mayor.
The service between the Indios Verdes and Tlatelolco stations could be restored this afternoon, according to the authorities, if the latest tests go well.
On Saturday morning, two trains on Line 3, which regularly transports around 500,000 passengers, collided between the Potrero and La Raza stations.
A young woman died and at least 106 people were injured, according to authorities.
The driver of one of the trains is one of the most seriously injured and is "stable", like the rest of those affected, according to Sheinbaum.
After the accident, the director of the metro, Guillermo Calderón, announced the departure of the deputy director of operations.
The Head of Government stated this Monday that "for now" there will be no other solutions: "The removal of the deputy director was requested in order to carry out the investigation since they are essentially operational problems."
Sheinbaum, however, has said that this morning he met with the staff of the Prosecutor's Office and asked them to "open all lines of investigation."
On Sunday, one day after the accident, the prosecutor Ernestina Godoy and the spokesperson Ulises Lara appeared to report on the work of the Public Ministry in the area and advanced that the contents of the black boxes of the trains had "contributed important advances in the investigation ”.
Godoy then assured that "in the shortest possible time" she would communicate the conclusions of the investigation and "the possible responsibilities that derive from them."
This Monday, the lawyer Cristopher Estupiñán, representative of some of the victims, stated in an interview with Milenio that the first complaint has already been filed.
The head of government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, during a press conference after the subway accident.
Government of Mexico City
The director of the underground, Guillermo Calderón, has reiterated this Monday that "on the night of Friday the 6th", hours before the crash, "a problem was detected" that the brigades went to inspect.
According to Calderón, they identified "that there was a signaling cable of more than 500 meters affected."
"At that moment, the operation was ordered at low speed and thus the night operation of this section ended," he explained on Monday.
Fernando Espino, president of the National Union of Workers of the Collective Transportation System, maintains, instead, that the "failure in the signaling area" was reported "on Friday morning."
“The cables are burning, probably due to a short circuit, affecting a section of approximately 500 meters.
In addition, centralized control devices, automatic piloting, are burned and, very importantly, the tracking of the trains is lost, the communication system fails, which is giving us a lot of trouble," he said this Monday, hours before the appearance of the authorities of the capital, in an interview on Radio Formula.
“This set of failures is what unfortunately causes my fellow driver not to see the train and crashes,” Espino said.
In a statement issued after the accident, the union assured that the failures are "constant" in the trains and facilities.
In the same letter, the union group expressed its "deep concern" because "maintenance for next year was not contemplated in the budget" and they "urgently demanded an additional item of 3,500 million pesos for maintenance" of the system.
But the head of government has insisted this Monday that "there has been no decrease in the metro budget."
“Neither for maintenance nor for absolutely nothing.
In fact, it has more budget now in 2023 than it did in 2022″, she has claimed.
The president, who since Saturday has been visiting the hospitals where those affected are located along with other high-ranking officials of the capital's government, has tried to head off the criticism of the state of the subway.
Since she became the head of government, in December 2018, the suburban has suffered three accidents, all with deaths.
The most serious was that of May 2021, when an elevated section of Line 12 collapsed while a train was passing.
26 people died and dozens were injured.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who had already closed ranks with Sheinbaum after the tragedy on Line 12, again expressed this Monday his "solidarity" and "support" for the head of government, who, he said, "is a working woman , upright, honest”.
"Since we are in electoral season, they take advantage to disqualify and attack," he defended.
subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS México
newsletter
and receive all the key information on current affairs in this country