Lusa - Business News - Portugal: No delay seen in high-speed rail plans due to government change - IP

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Lusa - Business News - Portugal: No delay seen in high-speed rail plans due to government change - IP

Lisbon, March.27,2024 (Lusa) - The head of Portugal's infrastructure managing company (IP), Miguel Cruz, recalled on Wednesday that there was consensus in the country's parliament on the high-speed railway line project and said he didn't anticipate any delays due to the change of government.
"Work is well underway and there was a consensus in the Portuguese parliament on this high-speed railway project. [...] We are working and, from that point of view, we don't anticipate any delays, not only because things are going well, but also because there was a specific consensus on the project," said the chairman of IP, the country's road and rail infrastructure manager, speaking to Lusa news agency on the sidelines of the "High Speed Railway" debate, organised by Proforum - Association for the Development of Engineering, in Lisbon.
At the end of January, IP launched the first tender for the concession to design, build, maintain and finance the first section of the High Speed Line, between Porto and Oiã (Aveiro), in a public-private partnership (PPP) model, and plans to launch the second, for the Oiã-Soure section, in July.
To this end, Portugal has applied for €875 million in European funds for the first phase (Porto-Soure) of the Porto-Lisbon high-speed railway line.
Miguel Cruz said today that there are still discussions to be had, namely about the third bridge over the River Tagus and the options that have to be taken on the Lisbon-Madrid link, but they will be done at the same time as the work takes place.
"We have time to discuss them and, quite frankly, it seems to me that there is a very large consensus on the need to make these kinds of investments and to raise the level of service associated with the railway network and, therefore, I hope that there will be no major disturbances here," the former secretary of state for the Treasury in former Socialist Party finance minister, João Leão's team told Lusa.
When asked about possible backtracking by the new government led by Luís Montenegro on decisions that have already been made, such as the high-speed line in Iberian rather than European gauge, or prioritising the Lisbon-Porto connection rather than Lisbon-Madrid, Miguel Cruz considered that "there will always be some voices on these matters", but in his opinion they are issues that are "sufficiently clarified".
"The Lisbon-Porto link has to be seen as an important link, one that is transformational in nature, but the high speed project can't stop here, as has happened in other countries," he added, emphasising that the work of discussing the strategy and options to be taken in the future has to continue.
During the debate, the vice-president of IP, Carlos Fernandes, who was the guest speaker, recalled that there is no country that has started building its high-speed network along an international axis and, on the question of the gauge, he argued that using the Iberian gauge avoids having to build new connections to cities, allowing trains to run on the different lines.
"We're always going to have an interoperability problem, we just have to know where we want to have it: whether it's 1,000 kilometres from Lisbon, for three trains a day [on the connection to Madrid], or whether it's here on Lisbon's doorstep for all the other trains," said Carlos Fernandes, reiterating that "the gauge is not a problem now".
With regard to Miguel Cruz's permanence on the IP board, the official who took up the post in August 2022, at the joint proposal of the ministry of finance led by Fernando Medina and the ministry of infrastructure and housing led by Pedro Nuno Santos, expressed his willingness and interest in continuing to be associated with the development of ongoing projects, but emphasised that it doesn't depend exclusively on him.
"We'll see what happens, that will certainly be the subject of discussion," he said.

MPE/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa

Agency : LUSA
Date : 2024-03-28 11:35:00

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