Urban Scares: A Rush-Hour Metro Accident in Mexico City

It’s a fear that time and time again rattles residents of big cities everywhere — train collisions on public transportation systems. That momentary panic struck Mexico City on Tuesday, August 4, as two metro trains collided in late-rush hour rain. Eight people including an infant were injured when one north-bound train rear-ended another at the metro’s Nativitas station at about 8 p.m., knocking standing passengers to the floor.

Luckily there were no serious injuries or damages. Within a couple of hours, service was restored entirely to Line 2, which crosses Mexico diagonally from west to south. Investigators said the cause of the crash was possibly related to brake failure. Rain fell hard and steady for much of the Aug. 4 night; the south end of Line 2 runs above ground.

The Mexico City metro is one of the largest and busiest in the world, up there with Tokyo and New York. That such an accident — though not serious — happened on this line comes with a particular historic chill. On October 20, 1975, a train plowed into another parked at Viaducto station, three up from Nativitas on Line 2. In archival photographs, one train’s car looks as though it literally swallowed one of the other’s. Thirty-one people died.

The 1975 accident was blamed on conductor error — or willful PRI-era sabotage, as one metro official claimed just last year.

Earlier on Tuesday, the city finance minister told Bloomberg that the famously stalwart 2-peso fare would be no more by 2010. The local government is considering a fare increase. Mexico City is also hunting for more federal money to help pay for Line 12, currently under construction and expected to cost 1.5-billion dollars.

* Photo above, the platform at Nativitas, 10 p.m., August 4, 2009.