Public hearings of the HPR may be delayed for 2012

The government’s timetable for the bullet train project that should connect Campinas to Rio de Janeiro, passing through São Paulo, was breached. The first round of public hearings was planned to happen this month in cities of the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, but no meeting took place and there are good chances of the meetings occur in 2012. In the National Land Transport Agency (ANTT), no one talks about new dates yet.

The uncertainty is the result of a lawsuit filed last month by the Federal Public Prosecutor (MPF) in the Federal District. In this document, MPF prosecutors allege that, before thinking about the bullet train, the government needs to rectify the interstate public transportation service throughout the country. Until today, the bus lines operate with authorization granted by ANTT, without having gone through the bidding process. The request was granted by the Federal Court, which ordered the suspension of any administrative process linked to the bullet train project.

The new text of the notice to bid of the bullet train has been practically completed by ANTT, with only a few final adjustments to be made. The public hearings are necessary for the agency to submit this material to criticism and suggestions for improvements, and then publish the final version of the notice to bid. In addition to preventing the holding of hearings, the Court’s decision does not allow the disclosure of the draft of the notice to bid and its forwarding to the analysis of the Brazilian Court of Audit (TCU).

ANTT has been trying to overthrow the Court’s decision, claiming that the process to resolve the interstate bus imbroglio is in progress, without having any kind of damage due to the administrative process of the bullet train. On last Thursday, an interlocutory appeal was referred by the agency to the federal judge João Batista Moreira.

A year ago, the government tried to hold the first auction of the bullet train, an event that was aborted after the companies claimed that they needed more time to study the proposal. On the occasion, the notice to bid of the bullet train had already been discussed in public hearings for almost two years. After three failed attempts to make the undertaking auction viable, the government decided to radically change its grant proposal.

Now, two grants will be made. In the first, the train technology and the service operator consortium will be chosen. In the second step, the construction consortium, which will perform the work, will be chosen. Because it suggests a more complex administrative structure than the previous model, there is no doubt that the new notice to bid will still cause a lot of discussion.

Back to square one, the bullet train is now a project without a specific deadline for completion. Despite the delay in public hearings and inspections of control bodies, the government has the ambition to make the first auction of the project in the first half of 2012. After the winner is defined, the executive project of the train will be designed, and then the hiring of the company that will take over the civil construction will be considered, which should only occur in mid-2013. If all goes well, the bullet train would be 100% running between 2019 and 2020.