Mexico City subway collapse was a tragedy foretold

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The Mexico City elevated subway line that collapsed, killing 25 people, was so poorly designed that passengers and experts feared an accident from the day it opened. But few expected the line to simply fall apart.

FILE - In this Jan. 20, 2012 file photo, men work on the construction of what will be the Number 12 Line, in Mexico City. The $1.3 billion Number 12 Line, the newest section of a Mexico City's vast subway system, was ill-fated from the start. The so-called Gold Line cost half again as much as projected, suffered repeated construction delays and was hit with allegations of design flaws, corruption and conflicts of interest.

Instead, authorities decided on quick patches, welding props under the bowed beams and reopening service.“Here in Mexico, nothing is taken care of until a tragedy occurs,” said López Meza, a seismic and structural engineering consultant. The scandal over forced closure of the costly new line in 2014 — just 17 months after it was inaugurated — essentially forced former Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard into political exile until he was rescued by his patron, new President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — who had helped make him mayor in 2006 and resuscitated him by naming him foreign relations secretary in 2018.

The Gold Line line chattered. It bumped. It shook. It screeched. The rails began to take on a wavy pattern. Drivers had to slow trains to as little as 3 mph on some stretches. But most reports had cleared the elevated track bed of any structural concerns until the 2017 quake, and complaints by those living near the tracks revealed what the subway line was made of.

In 2017, authorities patched and widened the column by injecting resins, swathing it in carbon fiber, and building a jacket of additional rebar and concrete around the base.

 

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