Government of São Paulo bids regional train in June

With an estimated investment of $9.35 billion and with two lines of rails, the State Government of São Paulo will bid in June the Intercities Train Network project, which involves 416 kilometers (km) of railroads, in the form of public-private partnership (PPP). With air-conditioned coaches, coaches with on-board service, Wi-Fi environment, multimedia system and low emission of pollutants, the trains should be similar to Europe’s traditional trains, though in Brazil the private sector will cover 70% of the cost.

The project was presented by Odebrecht and allows the formation of consortia. BTG Pactual is the proponent, along with Guilherme Quintella’s Estação da Luz Participações, said the lieutenant governor of São Paulo Guilherme Afif Domingos, responsible for the project in the public sphere.

The goal is that the north-south track connects the cities of Americana and Campinas to Santos, while the east-west track connects the cities of Sorocaba and São José dos Campos to Taubaté. Both stretches will most likely come together in one of São Paulo’s Line 6 – Orange stations of Metro– probably the one to be built in Água Branca.

The private proposal was possible thanks to the creation of the Expression of Interest from the Private Sector (MIP), legal tool that broke the monopoly of the public bureaucracy for concessions. Now the private sector can identify opportunities and initiate the process.

In the Intercities project, the state will be a junior partner, bearing 30%. In this format, the work schedule is much more agile than the traditional one. We should bid in June and we close the bidding in 60 days. Then the process of expropriations begins, said Afif, who expects the commencement of works for 2014. The work is scheduled for six years, but I believe the private sector will finish it in four. The sooner they deliver the sooner they begin to receive.

The process will allow foreign companies to integrate the competing groups. It will be required that they have previous experience in the operated systems with a given number of million passengers, and that they have already built a tunnel with this feature.  If an Italian company has the expertise, great.

Alternative to the car

Afif is enthusiastic about the tracks because he sees them as an alternative to the car, since they would offer the driver a fastest path on capital, interior and coast. According to Afif, the average speed should be, between stops and accelerations, around 120 kilometers per hour. This train is to compete with cars, because paying toll, gas, stress on traffic, etc.,… Our roads in these regions currently have huge traffic jams.

To ensure fluidity, the network will be fully segregated from freight trains. The freight issue is a shame. When they made the Beltway they did not make Ferroanel simultaneously, and it is wrong, the bed is already there, it is crazy, but it is vacated in highly dense regions.

The other big attraction would be the comfort, with air-conditioned coaches, coaches with on-board service, Wi-Fi environment, multimedia system and low emission of pollutants.
It is a project of great attractiveness because it covers high-density stretches. Just for the ABC region, there are 350 thousand people per day. At the cost of the pure rate, the work would be feasible, said Afif.

The lieutenant governor calculates the ticket value between $7.58 and $10.11 at its longest stretch.

HSR

Precisely because of the profile aimed to compete with the car, Afif does not consider the Intercities rival of the federal government’s high-speed rail (HSR). In the Sorocaba-Taubaté stretch, the tracks will run parallel, separated by a strip, and only in São Paulo they will share the platform, possibly in Água Branca.

The HSR is a high-speed rail that competes with the airplane; it does not take investors from the Intercities, said Afif, who in the last 18 months occupied part of the public agenda with international travels in search of potential investors for São Paulo’s PPPs.

The Intercities will not take investors from the HSR. In addition to the different profile of the tracks, on my trips to prospect for investors I saw a large number of skilled rail teams, both in Asia and in Europe. Currently Spain is fully stopped, Italy as well; and both of them have an industry and a rail park that want to react, invest in this tradition of producing fabulous trains. To Afif, the network is strategic for the expansion of the state economy. São Paulo can not continue to think small. We aren’t nearly close to our full potential.

Fonte: DCI