Mexico Formalizes ATTRAPI to Lead Passenger Rail Reform

Mexico has formally created the Agency for Trains and Integrated Public Transport (ATTRAPI), a new decentralized federal entity sectorized under the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transport (SICT), as the government moves from legislative reform into implementation of its passenger rail revival and integrated mobility agenda. The measure was published in the Official Gazette (DOF) on Jan. 13, 2026, via a presidential decree signed on Dec. 31, 2025, and takes effect the day of publication.

ATTRAPI is the institutional centerpiece of Mexico’s recent rail policy overhaul. In April 2025, President Claudia Sheinbaum sent Congress a reform initiative that proposed creating a new decentralized agency to coordinate railway development and strengthen oversight across passenger and freight operations, while also improving integration with urban mobility systems.

That push advanced in July 2025, when a broader rail reform package was published, prioritizing passenger rail, updating multiple laws, and mandating that the federal government create ATTRAPI within a set timeframe. The new January 2026 decree operationalizes that mandate by establishing ATTRAPI as a legally constituted entity with its own governance, objectives, and powers.

SICT framed the move as the formal start of a new institutional framework to plan, build and provide passenger rail services and to better integrate public transport systems.

What ATTRAPI is and What it Will Do

Under the decree, ATTRAPI is created as a decentralized organism of the Federal Public Administration with legal personality, its own assets, and technical/management autonomy, and it is sectorized to SICT. 

Its core objectives include:

• Planning and steering policy/programs and regulating the development and operation of the Mexican Railway System

• Planning and building rail infrastructure (and components) and acquiring railway equipment needed to deliver passenger rail service

• Planning, acquiring, building and operating public passenger transport systems (beyond rail), in coordination with state governments, positioning the agency to support integrated mobility projects

• Regulating, promoting, supervising, verifying and sanctioning activity related to rail infrastructure development, construction, operation, maintenance and service delivery, including interconnection and multimodal integration

• Coordinating projects with authorities across the three levels of government for both rail and public passenger transport systems.

In practice, the decree gives ATTRAPI a wide toolkit that spans the full project lifecycle: planning, procurement/contracting, construction, station and stop design, right-of-way processes, multimodal hubs, performance statistics, tariff-related functions in defined cases, investigations of rail incidents, and enforcement through sanctions.

ATTRAPI will be governed by a Governing Board chaired by SICT and composed of senior representation from: Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP), Economy, Energy, Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA), the Mexican Navy (SEMAR), Ministry of Agrarian, Territorial, and Urban Development (SEDATU), and the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT).

The decree also establishes a Director General appointed by the President, and sets deadlines for the board’s installation and the approval of the agency’s internal statute.

A key structural change is that the decree abrogates the 2016 decree that created the Regulatory Agency for Railway Transport (ARTF), and transfers ARTF’s human, budgetary, financial and material resources into ATTRAPI, while requiring pending matters and references in existing norms to be treated as ATTRAPI going forward.

This matters because earlier reform messaging emphasized strengthening oversight; now, the 2026 decree consolidates those functions into a single organism designed to both execute rail development and exercise regulatory, enforcement powers described in the decree.

The decree reiterates the constitutional and policy framing that treats railways, passenger and freight, as a priority area for national development, and links ATTRAPI’s creation to the government’s broader economic and territorial integration goals.

It also anchors the agency in the 2025-2030 National Development Plan, citing objectives such as expanding and integrating rail infrastructure with an intermodal approach and strengthening territorial integration. Within the decree’s considerations, the government references targets including expanding 3,000km of rail lines for freight and passengers and doubling rail freight volumes across a network of roughly 17,000km, alongside the goal of reducing logistics costs (cited in the decree as having represented 12% of GDP in 2020).