MRS and CPTM make a deal for East Segregation

The railroad concessionaire MRS Logística has just signed a deal for segregating a section of 12 km of railroads in the Great Sao Paulo area with Companhia de Transportes Metropolitanos do Estado de São Paulo (CPTM). With this, the section between Manoel Feio, in Itaquaquecetuba, and Suzano, in the eastern region, will have cargo and passenger transport simultaneously. Currently, cargo trains cannot operate in peak hours, reserved to passenger trains. The works are expected to begin this year, as soon as the environmental licensing process is concluded, and the end is expected for mid-2012, as informed by both companies in a statement.

According to MRS, this track segregation operation is part of the integrated solution for transposition in Sao Paulo, the so-called Ferroanel, still in blueprint. The project was developed jointly by both companies and consists of building a new track, exclusive for transporting cargo from MRS, parallel to the existing tracks, within the railroad range limit.

The segregation has been studied and discussed with CPTM for several years. The project eliminates a logistic bottleneck and will start solving, in a structure, definitive way, the coexistence of passenger and cargo transportation in Sao Paulo, notes MRS. In this section, the company will invest approximately US$ 59.755 million.

This operation, states the concessionaire, will enable the interconnection with its track to Santos harbor, where it is investing US$ 77.681 million in new rack locomotives. With this, it informs, the Santos mountain movement capacity will increase from 8 to 24 million tons a year, and it may reach 56 million in a second phase, highlights Eduardo Parente, president of MRS.

He explains that the segregation is crucial for cargo to arrive to Serra do Mar. “There is a demand, but currently there is no way for us to meet it due to this bottleneck, which we are now removing. The segregation will allow the direct connection between the regions of Vale do Paraíba, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro with Baixada Santista and the Santos harbor, without the restrictions of the current coexistence.”

For Sérgio Henrique Passos Avelleda, President of CPTM, in the past, traveling on the same tracks was not a problem. Over the past four years, the daily passenger transports jumped from 1.5 to 2,2 million people, and there are plans to achieve 3.7 million people over the next few years. The expansion plan from CPTM aims at operating its tracks with metro quality and the existing tracks no longer admit such sharing. “The East Segregation project considered the future demands from CPTM and MRS for the region and, with its implementation; it will also enable us to expand the Expresso Leste, and also reduce the intervals between our trains.”