Mexico’s highly efficient freight railways are operated by privately owned concessions. The system adopted for the concessions by the 1995 Railway Law provides exclusive rights to manage vertically integrated track and train companies over specified sections of the network and was designed to create competition between the companies in key markets. Competition is provided for in several ways; through parallel tracks, through alternate routes and through rights to use each other’s tracks on specific sections of the network. In this report, preparations for the establishment of the new rail regulatory agency are reviewed and compared to comparable regulatory arrangements in other OECD countries to ensure effective implementation of the new institutional arrangements.