Direct service returned to the Cancún corridor on August 15, two trains each way over Maya Train Section 5, the same stretch a federal court placed under mandatory environmental supervision in February.
That court order came from a Tribunal Colegiado, a federal collegiate circuit court, inside an amparo lawsuit brought by the environmental collective Sélvame del Tren. National outlets reported it between February 12 and 16 under headlines announcing that the works had been suspended. One widely circulated version credited the decision to the Supreme Court.
Neither framing survives contact with the resolution. For anyone booking a seat, living along the route, or trying to follow the litigation that has trailed this section since 2022, the practical question is narrower than the headlines suggested: what did a judge actually require, and who has to do it.
The order names two Profepa offices, not the railway
The resolution is directed at the Subprocuraduría de Recursos Naturales of the Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente, and at the same agency's Dirección General de Delitos, Conmutaciones, Denuncias y Quejas. It instructs both to take the measures needed for verification, inspection, conservation, and protection of activities in Section 5. The second office carries an additional duty: to formally process the citizen complaints filed over ecological damage in the corridor.
A suspensión definitiva in Mexican amparo procedure is a precautionary measure, not a final judgment. It holds while the underlying case advances, and it can be modified or revoked by a higher court. El Financiero reported that the measure does not necessarily cancel the works; instead, it establishes an obligation to strengthen environmental oversight during construction.
The obligation lands on the regulator. The railway itself was never the addressee.
Two round trips returned to the Cancún corridor on August 15
Poresto reported that the direct Cancún-Playa del Carmen route restarted on August 15, with two departures in each direction and a scheduled duration of roughly 49 minutes. The published timetable:
- Leaving Cancún at 6:45 and 10:30, arriving at 7:34 and 11:19.
- Leaving Playa del Carmen at 7:47 and 12:00, arriving at 8:40 and 12:53.
The reactivation is paired with Tren Maya Conecta, a feeder service linking stations to the airport, hotel zones, and commercial areas.
Tulum sits farther down the same section, on the stretch running south from Playa del Carmen. Both the Tulum station and Tulum Aeropuerto appear in the operator's current schedules, with circulation 302 departing Tulum Aeropuerto at 17:55 toward Mérida Teya.
Maya Train Section 5 crosses caves, not solid rock
The geology explains why this stretch, and not the six others, keeps returning to court. The Cancún to Tulum corridor sits on karst limestone, a porous surface laced with flooded caverns, underground rivers, and the cenotes that drain them. Environmental organizations have documented pilings driven deep into that terrain to carry the elevated viaduct, and have argued for years that the perforations fracture the cave systems below.
The federal government has itself acknowledged environmental damage on Section 5. What has not been made public is the progress of the restoration programs or whether they were carried out in line with the national and international standards invoked in the litigation. That silence is the gap the February resolution was written to close.
180 complaints, by one collective's count
Sélvame del Tren, also known as SélvameMX, said in February that it had filed 180 complaints with municipal, state, and federal bodies regarding the project, most of which focused on Section 5. The group had documented cement contamination and structural damage in the Quintana Roo cave system weeks before the resolution was notified.
Guillermo Dchristy, a member of the collective, framed the ruling less as a legal victory than as a signal that nature has rights and organized civil society can make a difference. The group also warned that a court order on paper guarantees nothing, and said it would return to the courts if it detects omissions by Profepa.
A second ruling that no Mexican court has to enforce
Coverage of the February decision often placed it alongside a different document, and the two are routinely confused. The International Rights of Nature Tribunal issued a ruling on the Maya Train at its Valladolid session in March 2023, finding crimes of ecocide and ethnocide against the Yucatán Peninsula and its Maya communities. An updated resolution was approved in September 2025 and delivered in New York during Climate Week, through Mexico's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, addressed to President Claudia Sheinbaum and Environment Secretary Alicia Bárcena.
That text holds the Mexican State responsible for the violation of these fundamental rights, declares cenotes to be subjects of rights, and orders both the suspension of the project and the demilitarization of Indigenous territories.
It is a citizens' tribunal, staffed by environmental law advocates rather than sitting judges, and it has no jurisdiction over Mexican agencies. Its findings carry moral and documentary weight. They do not oblige Profepa, Semarnat, or any Mexican court to act. The February suspension does. Reading them as a single legal chain is the most common error in coverage of both.
No public report has followed the February order
Six months after the resolution was notified, no account of what Profepa inspected, verified, or found on Section 5 has appeared in national or regional coverage. The agency has not published a compliance report. The collective has not announced a new filing.
Two things would change the picture on this page. The first is a Profepa report detailing the inspections it conducted and what they found. The second is Sélvame del Tren's return to the Tribunal Colegiado to argue that the order went unheeded. Until one of them arrives, the trains on Section 5 keep to their timetable, and the supervision ordered by a judge in February exists only in the file.
Should Profepa publish its Section 5 inspection reports as it files them? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.