A manifesto led by engineer, economist, and former PSD government minister Mira Amaral warns Portugal is at risk of isolation if it doesn’t start investing in the modernisation of its railways.
The document hopes to wake people up to the fact that Portugal could become what subscribers call “a railway island in the European context” – a country where even the gauge of tracks doesn’t correspond to European counterparts.
Explained Mira Amaral, the “gauge” anomaly means that merchandise coming into the country by rail will soon have to be unloaded at the border and then reloaded onto a ‘Portuguese train’ in order to arrive at its destination.
The complicated logistics will imply extra costs (to be ultimately loaded onto Portuguese consumers) when if powermakers started looking into available European funding, the rail network could be ‘saved’ from becoming a modern-day dinosaur.
Mira Amaral’s very political speech as the manifesto was released in Lisbon alluded to prime minister António Costa needing to ‘come on board’ and not dismiss railway upgrades as “taboo” as he did recently.
“If we start immediately, I think we could succeed”, Amaral told reporters. “The problem as we all know is that the Portuguese prime minister has said this is a taboo subject.
“In the democracy that I know, there are no taboos. Everything should be discussed – and this is what we hope to do, without taboos”.
The manifesto, also signed by former president hopeful and accomplished businessman Henrique Neto, will be up for debate at a conference of the Order of Engineers tomorrow (Wednesday) due to be attended by President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
