Only one company applied, and still under conditions, to operate trains on the 855 km stretch of the North-South Railroad, between Anápolis (GO) and Palmas (TO), inaugurated in May by President Dilma Rousseff. Following the new railway model, the state-owned company Valec offered the market the possibility for companies to place their wagons and locomotives on the stretch to transport their own cargo or that of third parties. But, although the route is important for the flow of grains, bran and fuel, the response was close to zero.
“There was a formal proposal, but conditional”, Valec's Director of Operations, Bento José de Lima, told Estado. The company, whose name is being kept confidential, said it was interested in transporting cargo on the railroad, as long as access to the port of Itaqui (MA) is guaranteed.
This is not easy to ensure, as the line between Palmas and Itaqui is a Vale concession. And this concession, in the “old” model, does not oblige the company to allow the passage of third-party trains, unless there is idle capacity on the line.
“The cargo goes from Anápolis to Palmas, and then the railroad is from Vale”, says the vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Logistics (Abralog), Rodrigo Vilaça. “There is a complexity there that Valec will have to negotiate.” Whether or not Vale's lines will carry the new operator's load is yet to be answered by the National Land Transport Agency (ANTT). The agency takes into account that the mining company is making investments to duplicate the railroad, which will gradually increase its capacity.
“The rules of the game are not given. Therefore, the market withdraws and says: 'it's a long shot, I'm not going into that adventure'”, evaluates the president of the National Association of Cargo Transport Users (Anut), Luis Henrique Teixeira Baldez, to explain the little private sector interest. The norms on the functioning of the independent transport of rail freight only came out a month after the government opened the competition for the use of the Norte-Sul. And they continue to be corrected.
“It has been a messed up process”, acknowledged the director of Valec. "It's the price we pay for wanting to speed things up." In addition to incomplete regulation, the railroad itself lacks complements, Baldez said. The State revealed, last week, that a 220 km stretch of the North-South road released by ANTT, between Palmas and Gurupi (TO), has no traffic conditions. Rails were stolen, ties rotted. The regulatory agency conditioned the use of the line to the completion of repairs. And it is inspecting the rest of the line, and only then will it release it.
Safety
But the railway needs improvements beyond these repairs, according to the president of Anut. There is a lack of signaling, detours and control systems that are placed on the line itself, but are not there. “It's not just playing the rail,” he says. The right thing, according to the executive, would be to complete the installation of this equipment, carry out a pre-operational test and then release the line to the market.
Valec's director says that the systems Baldez is referring to are used on lines with intense traffic, which would not be the case on this North-South stretch. At first, the expectation is that a couple of trains will pass a day. Therefore, this equipment will not be implemented, informed Bento Lima. Operational tests, in turn, are ongoing. At first, explains the director, the trains will not travel at speeds above 30 km or 40 km per hour. As long as there is safety regarding line traffic, trains will be allowed to accelerate. The average speed will be 60 km per hour.
Chinese rails arrive tomorrow after 3 years of waiting
Work on the so-called Southern Extension of the North-South Railroad, which will link the south of Goiás to the city of Estrela d'Oeste in São Paulo, is in full swing, with the construction of bridges and tunnels. But, there is no track. This unusual situation was caused by Valec's difficulty in purchasing the material. The bureaucratic soap opera lasted three years, required three different bidding processes and was even the subject of an investigation by the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU).
But, if the weather helps, the material purchased from China's Pangang will arrive at the port of Santos tomorrow, according to Valec. Payment will only be made upon completion of a quality test.
In the three competitions carried out by Valec to buy rails, Pangang was the winner. The first process was suspended due to a series of irregularities and the poor quality of the material.
Source: The State of S. Paulo
