Digital illustration of a bullet train.Jian Fan (Getty Images)
Once upon a time there was a bullet train that would link Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo that would cover the 500 kilometers of distance in less than two hours.
The modern journey would be ready for the 2014 World Cup, as a showcase for the power of that Brazil whose economy was growing at the rate of a locomotive.
Thus began a story that, after several failed attempts, at the moment does not go beyond fantasy.
The dream project timidly revived in recent days, when the state National Land Transport Agency (ANTT) gave permission to the private company TAV Brasil to resume the idea of the high-speed train.
It would be the first in Latin America.
The origins of the project that would unite the two main cities of Brazil date back to 2009, during the second term of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The then Minister of the Civil House, Dilma Rousseff, led the promise, which would be a reality for the 2014 World Cup. It was immediately postponed to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. 18 million passengers a year were expected, but when the athletes, not a single kilometer of tracks had been built.
Initially budgeted at 22,000 million reais (today more than 4,200 million dollars), it immediately shot up to 34,600 million.
Some foreign companies, such as the Italian AlsaldoBrena and China Railways, came to look for the Brazilian authorities, but quickly gave up.
Doubts about its viability ended up weighing.
The project was parked in a drawer, but even so it did not come out for free.
In those years, a public company was created that resisted dying until recently, and the previous studies cost 29 million reais to the public coffers, according to the Court of Accounts, which in 2021 warned that if the Government wanted to resume the train, it would have to start everything from scratch, because with so much delay the budget estimates had already expired.
After a few years without hearing about that uncomfortable frustrated dream, now the bullet train timidly returns thanks to the company TAV Brasil.
Its director-president, Bernardo Figueiredo, explained these days to the local press that this time there will be no state participation.
Figueiredo is considered the great enthusiast of the bullet train, since he presided over the national transport agency at the time when the idea was launched within the Government.
The plan is that the line, already promoted by the private sector, would have an extension of 380 kilometers and the trains would travel it at 350 kilometers per hour, linking the two cities in one hour and 30 minutes.
The first passengers would launch it in June 2032. Until then, 50,000 million reais would have to be disbursed.
TAV Brasil, created expressly to revive the train and which has a share capital of just 100,000 reais, says it is in talks with national and international investors, but financing a project of this magnitude without public funds is a major challenge.
Chastened by past frustrations, the government distances itself from the revived railway dream.
Last week, the new director-president of the state company Infra SA, Jorge Bastos, made it very clear: “We have no interest in participating in this project.
It is not one of our priorities.
It is a totally private authorization, they will take care of it, ”he said.
And it is that the specialists do not have them all with them.
For Cláudio Robert Pierini, a doctor in urban engineering from the Federal University of São Carlos, we will have to wait for the financing rounds: "Perhaps they have detected that there is a repressed demand," he says on the phone, like someone who gives a vote of confidence .
Currently, the Rio-São Paulo air bridge is one of the busiest in the world, and for more modest budgets, buses link the two cities in about six hours, with frequencies that can be as short as ten minutes at rush hour.
Competing with this scenario will be very difficult, emphasizes Pierini, who, in addition to expensive rates out of the possibilities of the average Brazilian, cites significant technical obstacles.
The Sierra del Mar imposes limitations on environmental matters and would force the construction of tunnels and viaducts that would make the project enormously more expensive.
They also limp some solutions to old problems.
The old project included no less than eight stops (two in Campinas, one in São Paulo, one at the Guarulhos international airport, one in São José dos Campos, one between Barra Mansa and Volta Redonda and two in Rio de Janeiro; one in downtown and another at the airport).
The high number of stations, the result of the classic struggle of local authorities to bring modernity to the doorstep, reduced speed and competitiveness.
Now only two are planned: Rio and São Paulo, and the branch linking the São Paulo capital to Campinas is also finished, but the solution does not seem satisfactory either: to lower costs, the two stations would be built on the outskirts of both cities.
In Rio, for example, the bullet train station would be in the Santa Cruz neighborhood, where the city ends in the west, 66 kilometers from the center, equivalent to about two hours of traffic jams.
“Urban stretches are more expensive because tunnels have to be made and they limit speed, but taking the stations to the periphery does not solve the problem.
The passenger is going to have to cross the city in the middle of traffic”, recalls the specialist.
In his opinion, it would be more feasible to take advantage of the current disused rail network to launch regional trains, not necessarily high-speed ones.
“Using the existing ones would be cheaper, but it's not as impressive.
In all this there is also some mysticism in the imagination of people.
They may get a feasibility study and find out what can be done, but I want to see how,” he comments somewhat incredulously.
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