Comparison of rail and road transportation costs for general cargo distribution in Mexico

Mexico has an extension of railways that has not presented great variations through time. In spite of this, it does not lose importance in comparison with highways that have been increasing their construction and modernization. Therefore, the objective of the present investigation is to analyze the costs of rail and road land transportation as a proposal that optimizes the distribution of cargo merchandise in general in Mexico. This research is broken down into: the identification and selection of general cargo transportation routes to gather information on distances, time, transportation costs; the calculation of rail and road transportation costs of the selected routes as a comparative for decision making in the mobilization of merchandise; and finally the processing and modeling of the information that allows minimizing the costs of the routes in the mobilization of general cargo merchandise in the transportation types. The analysis carried out allowed to conclude that great efforts have been made focused on developing and increasing competitiveness in the railway system in Mexico, but it has not been able to strengthen itself as the most used mean of cargo transporting, even though, the rail transportation cost are lower than motor transportation for a same route.