Porto, June 5, 2026 (Lusa) - The integration of the high-speed rail line in Porto and Gaia, including a new road-rail bridge over the Douro and a station at Santo Ovídio, will be open for public consultation between Monday and 29 June, Lusa saw on Friday.
According to a notice from the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) seen today by Lusa, the Environmental Compliance Report for the Implementation Project (RECAPE) will be open for public consultation “for 15 working days, from 8 [Monday] to 29 June 2026, on the Participa portal”.
This concerns sub-sections 04 and 05 of the Porto - Oiã (Oliveira do Bairro, Aveiro) section of the Porto - Lisbon high-speed line, whose implementation project was not approved by the APA in December due to the concessionaire’s intention to relocate Gaia station to Vilar do Paraíso and to build two separate bridges over the River Douro instead of a combined road-rail bridge, as had always been planned.
On 31 March, the vice-president of Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP), Carlos Fernandes, expressed his satisfaction that Santo Ovídio was returning as the definitive solution for the Gaia high-speed station, acknowledging an “incident” with the concessionaire AVAN Norte (Mota-Engil, Serena, Teixeira Duarte, Casais, Alves Ribeiro, Conduril and Gabriel Couto), which had wanted to relocate it to Vilar do Paraíso.
On 7 April, the minister for infrastructure and housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, told parliament that “there will be no delay” in the works on the first section of the Porto-Lisbon high-speed line, scheduled to start this year and finish in 2030.
The minister also pointed out that, should the 2030 deadline not be met, there would be penalties for AVAN Norte, “starting with the immediate loss of the availability payments required by the contract, namely €100 million per year lost due to delays caused by the infrastructure being unavailable”.
In December, the APA rejected the changes that the AVAN Norte consortium wished to make to the high-speed line and, in addition to issues relating to the bridge over the Douro or the Gaia station, also rejected the consortium’s plans to build a shorter tunnel section and, for the remaining section beneath Vila Nova de Gaia, at a higher elevation than initially planned, which would lead to further demolitions above ground (136 demolitions planned in Gaia and Porto, of which 109 are homes and 27 businesses).
For the APA, if Gaia station were to be located in Vilar do Paraíso, it would be “in a peripheral area” without “interconnectivity with other forms of public transport”.
“It is important to recall that the development of Gaia Station in the Santo Ovídio area, integrated into the relevant Detailed Plan and with guaranteed links to the metro line, was considered, at the time of the Preliminary Study’s assessment, to be a particularly relevant aspect with positive and significant socio-economic impacts, as it would enable the creation of a new and important centre of activity, with the inherent stimulus for the enhancement of the urban space in which it is situated‘, the agency emphasised at the time.
As for the construction of two bridges over the Douro instead of a road-rail bridge, the APA also noted that this was "another key detail of the project and that it underwent significant changes in the Detailed Design compared to what was recommended in the Preliminary Study".
Porto City Council also pointed out, back in April, regarding the integration into Porto and the Campanhã station, that AVAN Norte "presented an alternative solution to the one that had been put out to tender", which "did not correspond to the project previously assessed and approved by the municipality".
The Gaia station at Santo Ovídio and the road-rail bridge had been planned since September 2022, when the high-speed line project was presented, but in April 2025, the consortium unilaterally submitted an alternative proposal contrary to the Preliminary Study, which was ultimately rejected by the APA, leading the consortium to now revert to the original project.
JE/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
