Ferroanel will have three stretches of 200 km

After years of troubles, the federal and state governments have decided that the Ferroanel of São Paulo will be composed of three stretches with approximately 200 kilometers long. Only the cost of construction is expected to surpass $1 billion – value without the environmental and social compensations imposed to the project, which will resolve a serious conflict between passenger and freight trains within the city of São Paulo.

The business model has not yet been closed. The project may be done through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP), a public concession or by the rule of the new Brazilian railroads, which separates the infrastructure from the operation. This means that the federal government would build Ferroanel and open the network for use by multiple operators. But this matter is still under negotiation, as it involves a stretch under concession from MRS Logistica. In addition, the company manages the rack system to descend the mountain to Santos.

The first stretch of Ferroanel to be built will be the North, favored by the federal government. The railroad between Jundiaí and Manoel Feio, in Itaquaquecetuba, will be built next to the North stretch of the Beltway, with some stretches through tunnel. It tends to reduce costs and the environmental impact. According to the regulatory expert and superintendence of freight transport services from the National Land Transport Agency (ANTT – Agência Nacional de Transportes Terrestres), Francisco Gildemir Ferreira, this is the stretch with the greatest potential for transport.

When completed, it will account for 90% of the Ferroanel demand, he said. According to projections, this stretch will handle about 40 million tons of freight by 2040, 24 million to Santos. To get to the terminals of Santos, however, the trains will have to pass through a segregated track under construction by MRS giving access to Paranapiacaba, Ferreira said. From there, the freight has to go down through the rack system of MRS.

The southern stretch, defended by the state government, will be the second to be built and will have a demand of approximately 5 million tons. In this case, there is already a project prepared by Dersa, bordering the South Beltway, between Evangelista de Souza Station and the city of Ribeirão Pires. When the Beltway was developed, the state government set a route of almost 30 km for Ferroanel. There is an additional lane of 160 meters that is already expropriated, highlights the planning advisor of the Secretary of Logistics and Transport of the State of São Paulo, Milton Xavier.

According to him, the Southern stretch is a priority for the State’s economy, since it receives a large volume of freight from Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, as well as other regions of São Paulo. But with the investment programs of CPTM for the carriage of passengers, the Northern stretch has also become urgent, the advisor said. With the purchase of new locomotives and coaches to reduce the time of departure of passenger trains, the passage of trains through the city of São Paulo will become increasingly unviable.

The Northwest stretch, linking the network to Evangelista de Souza (still to be defined) should be the last to be built and its schedule will depend on demand, initially planned for 3 million tons. “Today, the decision is to make the three stretches, with the North and South as the construction priorities,” Ferreira from ANTT said.

Dispute. The discussion about the need for construction of Ferroanel has lasted more than a decade. Today, without the boundary of the city, freight trains have to compete with passenger trains for the tracks in order to pass through the capital. Much of the transport has to be done overnight, which significantly reduces the potential for transport by the railroads.

Milton Xavier, of the Secretary of State, notes that in 2011 the railroad transport was responsible for only 18% of the freight handled in Santos. The overwhelming majority of freights entering and leaving the country’s largest port are transported by truck. The impact of this can also be seen in the capital traffic, which had to restrict the movement of trucks within the city to avoid traffic bottlenecks.

According to industry sources, in recent months, the project gained another supporter: president Dilma Rousseff gave an ultimatum to the project to be accelerated.