Abandoned railroad costs the same as a HPR

Former peddler Marino Soffiati, aged 47, needed some time to understand how 360 meters of track disappeared overnight. Stopped on the empty gravel slope which had once been km 221 of the Cajati-Santos railroad, Mr. Soffiati could only see the marks of the blowtorch on the floor.

A very well structured gang carved up and stole 16 tons of track that rainy night.

Three years later, this gap in the Cajati-Santos railroad is just one of many in this stretch of 250 km of abandoned railroad, now managed by América Latina Logística (ALL). The stretch, which was once the route for minerals and also for people like Mr. Soffiati himself, is now just another picture of the utter neglect of 16,000 kilometers of railroad throughout the country, a problem which tends to get even worse.

The National Land Transport Agency (Agência Nacional de Transportes Terrestres – ANTT) says that two thirds of Brazilian railroads are either underused or disused. This week, the agency will publish a report showing the exact locations of the 5,760 kilometers which have been granted but are completely ignored.

The Transport Group of the Federal Prosecution Office (Ministério Público Federal – MFP) estimates that this situation has brought a total loss of US$ 25.51 billion to the country’s assets. This is the size of the effort that the country needs to make to construct the first Brazilian bullet train, connecting Campinas, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, a business proposition which is now under threat.

The case of neglect of the railroads is now in the hands of the Federal Audit Court (Tribunal de Contas da União – TCU). The MPF has asked the institution to investigate the concession contracts and what has been called the destruction of public assets. The first contract that will be considered is the largest of them all, that with ALL.

The target of the MPF is to require that all the concessions are reassessed by the Court. We will start with the ALL contract, but the aim is that the investigation will cover all the concessions made between 1996 and 1998, says Thiago Lacerda Lopes, a prosecutor and also the coordinator of the Transport Group of the MPF. The ANTT says that the contract is very lax, both with regard to enforcement of targets and also regarding the use of stretches of railroad.

Destruction

The right to make a decision about which stretch to exploit has been the death sentence for branch lines considered of little interest. The situation has now got worse with the neglect, and this has generated a social problem shown in the stretch of land for right-of-way, now without control.

In Itanhaém, in the state of São Paulo, the presence of high grass, the thefts and squatting are rife. The former station in the Cibratel district is now the home of Maria de Lourdes. For the building, she paid US$ 10,911 to a former railroad employee. It was all she had.

Banana producer Marcos Ribeiro, 36, criticizes the neglect. Illegal plantations of the fruit dominate the former track of the railroad and gets in the way of his business. Some years ago, the area was the target of looters, people looking for the metal of the tracks, the wood of the sleepers and also the cables of the old telegraph system.

In the meantime, the railroad station that once transported agriculturalist Mr. Ribeiro, the housewife Maria de Lourdes and peddler Mr. Soffiati is crumbling, agonizing over time.