IP starts with 76 million work on the North Line. It'll take three years

A work on this railway section in the district of Aveiro will be executed by the consortium consisting of the companies Somafel – Engineering and Railway Works, Construction Gabriel Couto and Teixeira Duarte, integrating a more comprehensive investment plan to increase the security of the lines and their commercial flexibility.

At the consignment ceremony of the undertaking, the Minister of Infrastructure, Miguel Pinto Luz, classified the intervention as “absolutely essential” and pointed it out as proof that advances in the construction of the High Speed Line do not invalidate the bet on the railway between Porto and Lisbon.

“High Speed will only open more space on the North Line,” the governor defended, assuming as expected that in the future there will be a significant displacement of passengers from the current road to the super-fast, which should free the existing one for more freight transport.

The ongoing works in this and other parts of the country, as they anticipate future needs, are therefore what Pinto Luz considers “a collective investment effort, completely transforming the country”.

Still on the expected growth in freight transport, Maria Helena Campos, of the IP board of directors, stressed that the effort between Válega and Espinho provides for the construction of safeways of at least 750 meters, for parking of these trains while circulating passengers.

Paulo Tavares, also from IP, still expects a 45% increase in the movement of people, which should go from 5.8 to 8.4 million passengers per year. In view of this, other changes announced for the North Line are the “renewal of end-of-life equipment, integral replacement of the catenary route, alteration of the layout of the stations of Esmoriz and Ovar, new passenger docks and suppression of road and pedestrian level crossings”.

This last example was, moreover, one of those valued by Pinto Luz, who, in the context of the “several challenges” that Espinho faces at the level of his circulation routes, highlighted “the scourge” of the level passages and the “constant tragic news” about occurrences in his crossings.

Other challenges associated with Espinho, still according to the ruler, are the Vouga Valley Line, where it wants to improve access to Gaia by communities located between Santa Maria da Feira and Oliveira de Azeméis, and then the National Road 109, where it is “an absolutely unavoidable priority” to stop its degree of degradation.

At the same ceremony, the mayor, Jorge Ratola, said that Minister Pinto Luz “has done for Espinho much more than people think or know”, but launched an appeal to him: “May the bureaucracy with which we are faced every day — with decisions that take years and years to be made — be more agile and [the decision-makers] do not resign to the state of things.”.