Curitiba’s Metro may cost US$ 2 billion

The preliminary design of the city of Curitiba for its Metro foresees investments of US$ 2 billion, according to Planning Minister Paulo Bernardo. The executive is scheduled to meet tomorrow with the mayor of Curitiba, Luciano Ducci, in Brasilia, to discuss the inclusion of work on the second version of the Growing Acceleration Program (GAP).

“These are preliminary numbers. The first version provided US$ 1.14 billion. In recent meetings, Ducci said that the investments will total US$ 2 billion”, said Bernardo.

The minister does not know how much the federal government can fund the project. “We will ask how the city can compromise and we will see. We cannot say we will provide half of the fund because, as there is not a closed project yet, these numbers vary”.

The Metro system in Curitiba will be included in the US$ 10.24 billion of the GAP-2. But the city must compete for resources with Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte, which also have plans in passenger rail. Rio Grande do Sul, in the south of Brazil, should take US$ 2.3 billion.

Recently, Bernardo said that the project will not be completed in time for the World Cup 2014. “We are not discussing Metro for the World Cup because I think it would hardly time to do. We need to dissociate it. Also, if we promise a deadline, instead of the Metro, we will have only a construction site”. For the World Cup, the minister said that works are guaranteed such as the transport corridor from Afonso Pena Airport to the Rodoferroviaria, improvements in Visconde de Guarapuava Avenue and the expansion of the Green Line.

At the end of last year, the Mayor Beto Richa met Bernardo to try to include the work of the Metro in the Cup’s GAP, but the negotiation was unsuccessful. The federal government proposed that Curitiba should fund all the work and offered US$ 546.2 million in financing. The mayor said the city would be unable to fund the project alone.

Paulo Bernardo, who yesterday attended the inauguration of the Productive Development Policy (PDP) in Paraná, in an event sponsored by the Federation of Industries of Parana (Fiep), also said it considers reasonable the possibility of withdrawing some host cities of 2014 World Cup in with the delay of works. “We need to take into consideration that in many cities and states has been no change of government, such as Curitiba and Paraná. We will have to do with this new staff as it is the works schedule and make a reassessment”, the executive said.