During 2020, the Mexico City Metro set itself the goal of carrying out 552,059 maintenance services to the equipment and facilities that constitute the operational infrastructure of the system, however, they only performed 262,989 services, 47.6% of the original physical goal, reported the Superior Audit of Mexico City (ASCM).
This is the ASCM/133/20 audit —the most recent made to the Collective Transport System (STC)—, which aimed to evaluate the performance of the budget program “Operation and Maintenance of Massive, Concessioned and Alternate Public Transport”, in which the audit body also found a difference between the goals proposed at the beginning of the year and the reports delivered.
In the Annual Operational Program (POA) it had been estimated to carry out 552 thousand 059 maintenance actions, however, when analyzing the quarterly progress reports it observed that the original goal had been modified adjusting it to the number of services foreseen in the work programs which contemplated 483 thousand 774 maintenance actions.
Read more | The Metro recorded 1.7 failures a day in 2022, more than in 2021; Line 3, one of the most reported by users
“In the analysis of the 2020 Quarterly Progress Reports, it was found that the original goal was modified, adjusting it to the number of services foreseen in the aforementioned work programs (483,774). In this regard, the 61 budgetary allocations linked to the adequacy of the resources allocated to Budget Program E042 “Operation and Maintenance of Massive, Concessioned and Alternate Public Transport” were reviewed in order to verify that the modification of the original goal was authorized; However, in all of them it refers to the fact that the budgetary adjustments do not alter the number of services originally scheduled.
It should be noted that when the Audit requested the Metro the document in which the reduction of the goal was based, the STC provided an official letter in which it was warned that the adjustment was authorized on December 8, 2020, just three weeks before the end of the reported year and argued that the variation was due to the decrease in revenues caused by the low influx of passengers during the first two waves of COVID-19.
Despite this, the audit took as reference the goal of original maintenance services and not the modified ones.
During 2020, for the Operation and Maintenance of Massive, Concessioned and Alternate Public Transport, the exercise of 7 thousand 433 million 906 thousand pesos was authorized, a resource with which the authorities sought to specify a greater maintenance of the rolling stock, the incorporation of technological innovations and the maintenance of fixed facilities, in order to provide users with an uninterrupted transport service and at the established schedules, because the continuous breakdowns, the low frequency of passage and, consequently, the agglomeration in trains and stations, did not allow it.
However, the objectives were not achieved because, the Metro argued, due to the health emergency of COVD-19 it did not have enough personnel to dedicate themselves to carry out the planned activities and because they were reassigned to other projects.
“The audited subject explained that these variations were also a consequence of the increase in the absence of personnel, generated by the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus; the need to assign personnel in charge of preventive maintenance to deal with breakdowns that, on a contingent basis, occurred in fixed facilities during the provision of the transport service; and for the execution of various special projects,” reads the ASCM report.
According to a table contained in the audit, which details the number of maintenance services and their specialty, it is noted, for example, that only 20% of the projected services in terms of ventilation and air conditioning were met; 36.4% in telecommunications; 41 per cent in centralized command; 50% of the actions related to the coordination of automation and control; and 56.9% of expected attention to automatic piloting.
This Saturday, January 6, two trains that were circulating on Line 3, in the section between Potrero and La Raza collided claiming the life of an 18-year-old girl and leaving 106 people injured, including the driver of one of the trains.
After this accident, the third with fatalities in the current administration, the head of Government, Claudia Sheinbaum, said that the Metro has not been reduced its budget and that it receives the necessary maintenance.
🔴 “They are ideas, they are said”: the head of government, @Claudiashein, assures that there have been no cuts in the @MetroCDMX but the opposite, that “historic investments” have been made.
What do the official data say? We tell 🧵👇 you pic.twitter.com/VxcQ1A5yA1
— Political Animal (@Pajaropolitico) January 10, 2023
During an event on Tuesday at the mayor’s office of Iztapalapa, the president said that the comments on the reduction of the budget to the STC “are ideas, they are said”, however, in a review made by Animal Político to the Public Account from 2018 to 2022 it was confirmed that in real terms the decrease to the budget to the Metro amounts to 3 thousand 112 million pesos, being maintenance one of the areas that have been most impacted.
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