It was in October 2020 that Pedro Nuno Santos relaunched the high-speed project in Portugal. The final presentation of the National Investment Program for 2030 (PNI2030) included the construction of the Porto-Lisbon and Porto-Vigo lines. In the case of Porto-Lisbon, the government has refrained from investing in purely variants of the Northern Line and accelerated the travel time target from two hours to one hour and fifteen minutes.
In April 2021, Pedro Nuno Santos started the National Railway Plan. The document aims to structure the rail network until 2050 and ensure that trains stop again in all district capitals (including Bragança, Viseu and Vila Real). However, the plan has suffered several delays and it could already be submitted to the Assembly of the Republic in a government led by Pedro Nuno Santos.
The presented plan became a new burden for Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP), the company responsible for the work on the railway network and which was under the supervision of the new PS leader for almost four years. IP is also responsible for the implementation of the 2020 investment plan (Ferrovia 2020), presented in 2016 and which suffered delays of several years in 2019. There were works at the time, such as the renovation of the North Line between Válega and Espinho, that would not be completed until 2022 or 2023, more than three years after the deadline.
In November 2019, the minister accepted the delays and considered a possible return of CP to the pre-Refer era and the dismantling of IP, which combines road management with the rail network: “Carril the um side and train on the other side is something that really confuses me,” he said at a conference at IP headquarters in Pragal. However, in 2021, Pedro Nuno Santos already admitted that he had maintained the IP as it is, to benefit from the revenues from tolls that will finance rail works from 2030 onwards.
At the end of 2023, the Ferrovia 2020 program has several works planned that will not be completed until 2027, such as the electrification of the Douro line between Marco de Canaveses and Régua. Still on this line, Pedro Nuno Santos was among the ministers who promised that trains would return to the Pocinho-Barca d’Alva section, closed since the end of 1988. Years pass and the promise has not yet gone beyond the launch of a public tender for a project that has already been studied by the Coordination Committee of the Northern Region and has a profitability of more than 8%.
It should also be noted that several Ferrovia 2020 works, such as the electrification of the Minho line and the return of the train to the route between Covilhã and Guarda, left several stations and stops with platforms too small to accommodate trains such as the Intercidades.
It was also during Pedro Nuno Santos’ mandate that Portugal stopped offering night trains. In March 2020, the pandemic served as a pretext for CP’s Spanish partner, Renfe, to suspend the connection between Lisbon and Madrid (Lusitânia train) and the rental of rolling stock for the connection between Lisbon and Hendaye, on the French border , to end. Even though he took part in three Iberian summits, the then minister never managed to convince his Spanish colleagues to maintain these rail links, contrary to what is happening in the rest of Europe.
Still in the Iberian domain, Pedro Nuno Santos even suggested that Spain needed to “put on its boots” so that the high-speed connection between Porto and Vigo could move forward. At the end of 2023, there are already two options on the Spanish side for the southern exit from Vigo; On the Portuguese side, there are no scenarios yet for the construction of the route between Braga and Valença, which would allow journeys between the city of Invicta and the Galician city in one hour.
Source: DN
