Mexico's Maya train: Work halted over cave concerns

[John Ashworth]

Mexico's Maya train: Work halted over cave concerns

A judge in Mexico has ordered the temporary suspension of works on a stretch of the Maya train project, citing a lack of environmental permits. The project to build a railroad in the Yucatán Peninsula is President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's flagship infrastructure programme. But cavers warn that it threatens caverns dating back millions of years. The judge ordered works to be halted until studies could be carried out about the works' environmental impact. Cavers had joined forces with environmentalists to bring the case to court last month. They argued that a change in the route of the train line linking the tourist hotspots of Cancún and Tulum, known as Section 5, would harm the jungle it will now run through and the network of caves which lies beneath it...