The high-speed rail link between Porto and Vigo may not be realized until 2030, according to the deadline set by the Portuguese government in the public presentation of the project [Lisbon-Porto-Vigo] in October 2022.
The Faro de Vigo newspaper headlines this Saturday’s edition with the headline “Brussels tumbles high speed plan for Porto: “Not realistic for 2030″”, based on information published by the European Commission’s Transport Commissioner, Adina-Ioana Valean. Jorge Mendes, the Social Democratic deputy elected for the district of Viana do Castelo, told Jornal de Notícias that “the PSD will call the Minister of Infrastructure, João Galamba, as a matter of urgency”.
According to the Galician daily, the Transport Commission refuses to prioritize the project and allocate funds because it considers it “green” (not very mature). And puts its implementation in 2040, as part of the strategy of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), which provides for the connection of European territory through a capillary network of roads, railways, inland waterways and short sea shipping routes. And this is backed by a “macro plan” of investments of 244 billion euros, which aims at “European cohesion, without inequalities between North and South, to be achieved by 2050”.
The same newspaper describes that this planning will be carried out in three phases, defined by the European Commission “according to the degree of maturity of each project”.
The first phase foresees “the basic network” to be realized by 2030. The second, the “extended basic network”, to be realized by 2040, and the third, the “global network”, by 2050.