Two important conclusions emerge from the XV Congress of ADFERSIT (Portuguese Association for the Development of Integrated Transport Systems), which took place this week at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. On the one hand, the priority of rail investment, a goal now supported by the PRR (Recovery and Resilience Plan) and strategic in terms of meeting the challenges of decarbonisation, but also essential for increasing national competitiveness. On the other hand, the urgency to win this race against time which, says Ricardo Paes Mamede, “is a bet that should have been made 30 years ago”.
For the ISCTE professor, who took part in one of the debates at this conference, there are huge benefits to the railway, but “I have no exceptional expectations of its impact on the economy”. More optimistically, Ricardo Mourinho Félix, defends that “it’s not just about what we can gain, but also what we can lose”. The vice-president of the European Investment Bank (EIB) believes that the current challenges of the transport sector in general will also be opportunities to increase competitiveness, despite the PRR’s short financing terms and implementation capacity, which “has limits” . Nevertheless, the former secretary of state emphasizes the importance of combining efforts – strategic and financial – between the public and private sectors, so that all goals are achieved. Connecting Lisbon and Porto in an hour and 15 minutes
One of the priorities of the National Railway Plan is the high-speed connection between Lisbon and Porto, an objective that has been talked about for decades and is expected to carry around eight million passengers annually. “It’s about improving passenger mobility, especially on this section of the Northern Line which is congested at several points,” said Pedro Moreira, president of CP – Comboios de Portugal. However, from Miguel Cruz’s perspective, “this must be an alternative with an economic and relevant impact”. However, the president of IP – Infraestruturas de Portugal warned about the importance of this connection, which does not limit the choice of location for the new airport and takes it into account in the construction of the respective interfaces. On the private sector side, Alberto Ribeiro, manager of Grupo Barraqueiro, which owns B-Rail, a company with activities in the rail sector, defends the need to move forward quickly. “This connection has been talked about since 1985, without an inch of line being drawn, but I believe there is now political will,” he emphasizes.
Finally, Pedro Siza Vieira, President of the Congress, highlighted the words of the President of the Republic, who concluded the first day of debate. “Now is the time for execution and for overcoming deadlocks in a number of transport areas.” Currently, he said, the country has limited financial resources in time, which will contribute to the effectiveness of this implementation. Regarding the new high-speed line, he believes that “it is the most decisive, transformative and structuring public investment in recent years”, which will help to build a large Atlantic metropolitan area that will allow the transportation of passengers but also that of goods, connecting to the future airport and later the ports, and making the infrastructure profitable.
Source: DN
