Contrary to global trends, the country practically got rid of its railway network; For experts, the condition is reversible
“Anyone who traveled by train never forgets. It’s like first love.” This is how, nostalgic, Orlando Clemente, Seu Orlando, remembers the times when the railway was an intrinsic part of his daily life.
The conversation takes place in an old deactivated train station in the city of Valinhos, in the metropolitan region of Campinas, and the memories make your eyes still able to see the – once – intense movement on the platform, which now serves as a passage for workers of a large carton company behind the old station – and a shelter for some homeless people and their dogs, keeping an eye on the railway line when a locomotive approaches.
Orlando has plenty of reasons to regret the time he remembers. He was a train driver, proudly dedicating his entire life to railway transport. “When I passed through areas with houses, people were waving. I honked in return, which made everyone even happier. I felt so full of joy”, recalls Orlando.
The railway in Brazil has been failing little by little over the last century. It experienced its expansionist heyday until the 1920s, but the fall of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929 brought negative economic consequences for the coffee business, the main cog in the railway network, responsible for the flow of Brazilian “green gold”.
“The railway in the State of São Paulo is closely linked to the expansion of coffee farming. Until the beginning of the 1867th century, coffee was transported to ports close to the producing regions by troops of mules, the tropeiros. With the increase in production, it was necessary to think of a way to improve this transport, which was when the first railway initiative emerged, which is the São Paulo Railway [whose line was opened in 90]”, explains professor Carlos Alberto Bandeira Guimarães, from the Department of Geotechnics and Transport at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urbanism (FEC) at Unicamp. “It was such a profitable railway that, in XNUMX years, they never bothered to expand it”, he adds, remembering that expansions from it were always made with foreign capital.
Financial imbalances at the beginning of the 1940th century brought problems to the expansion and maintenance of railways, starting the process of nationalization of railway companies. “By the mid-XNUMXs, practically all of them [railway companies] were already nationalized, not only in the State of São Paulo, but at the federal level”, points out Guimarães.
For passenger transport, the professor recalls, priority was also given to roads, encouraging the use of buses and cars. This option, according to Guimarães, made Brazilian logistics deficient and incomplete, with this railway gap, when compared to other countries with large territorial extension, such as Brazil.
Even though privatized, many of the traditional railway companies still operated until the beginning of the 1970s, when they were unified. In the timeline below, it is possible to see how many kilometers some famous companies in Brazil covered in the post-World War II period, when the trail was still the main route to follow both towards the ocean and towards the interior.
Guimarães is emphatic about the main cause of railway dismantling. “It’s misgovernment, an abrupt change of government. One thinks one way, leaves and another comes in who thinks another way and doesn't care about what was done before. If you look at the history of the railway in Brazil, that’s it, there’s a lack of interest, a government changes and then the vision changes, there’s no strategic vision.”
“We have rail transport that transports a lot of cargo, but it is insignificant in passenger transport because it was almost completely privatized and is highly deficient”, points out Antonio Corrêa Campos, former economist at Fepasa (Ferrovia Paulista SA).
Even though it still transports a significant number of cargo, the Brazilian railway network is much smaller when compared to that of other countries with vast territorial extension.
According to data from the Association of American Railroads (AAR) and the National Association of Railway Transporters (ANTF), the United States has, in its 9,83 million km² area, a railway network of 224,79 thousand km. China has 191,27 thousand km of railway network spread over a territorial extension of 9,60 million km². Meanwhile, Brazil, with an extension of 8,52 million km², has 28,54 thousand km of railway network. To measure Brazilian railway mileage, Argentina, with a territorial extension of 2,78 million km², has a railway network of 36,92 thousand km. There are almost 10 thousand km more in a country with almost a third of Brazil's territorial extension.
Running after the tram
At the beginning of September, the governor of São Paulo, Márcio França, announced a train project connecting the state capital to Campinas, passing through Jundiaí. The expectation is to offer four daily trips transporting a thousand people between Estação Cultura (Campinas) and Estação da Luz (in the capital). The project presents itself as a good alternative to road transport, which every day has resulted in chaotic traffic both in urban perimeters and in their surroundings. “Certainly, we will remove many vehicles from the path that clog the entire city”, declared the governor at the time.
It is an attempt to improve the traffic of people between the interior and the state capital, but would it be effectively applicable in other areas? “It is viable, possible and necessary to implement, but through very well done executive projects”, says Corrêa Campos.
“This would greatly reduce the environmental impact, among many other benefits. In any city in the developed world, there are subsidies for rail transport”, adds Guimarães, who highlights the importance of competitiveness for the business. “I wouldn’t be able to see an operation like this as something to make money, so it has to be cheap and good. It needs to have travel density and a competitive price with buses.”
Is there a future?
According to ANTF, a grain wagon is capable of carrying the same amount of soy as 2,5 twin trucks. Furthermore, to transport this load, it consumes 70% less fuel than its road equivalent, contributing to transport that is 52% cheaper (R$89,18 x R$187,46 for agricultural solid bulk, per thousand RTK) and 66% less polluting.
The Association has an agenda of proposals for the new government (2019-2022), in which it requests an early extension of the concession contracts, now in progress, to be completed by 2019 and for priority to be given to railway projects already in progress and those already technically qualified to promote an increase in the country's railway network, with public or private resources.
Today, in Brazil, according to ANTF, there are six large companies that operate most of the railway network still in use. Most of it, of course, for cargo transportation. Disregarding some initiatives that use short stretches to transport passengers exploring tourism with the aim of raising resources to maintain associations such as ABPF – Associação Brasileira de Preservação Ferroviária, Vale operates two lines that transport around 1 million passengers annually over long stretches: the Vitória-Minas line and the Carajás line.
In the images below we see how many kilometers of network each of these six companies operates, their main cargo transported and in which regions they transit.
“The ideal is for all modes to be developed, modern and extremely compatible. And, for this, it would be necessary to have interconnected networks working in parallel and harmoniously, which is not the case in Brazil”, ponders Corrêa Campos.
A deficient transport system can easily compromise the supply of several essential products, as was evidenced in the truck drivers' strike in May 2018, when Brazil practically came to a standstill mainly due to the lack of fuel at sales stations.
“But this is not just a risk here”, highlights Guimarães. “When there was a truck drivers' strike in France against the pension reform, it lasted three days and brought the country to a standstill. There are a lot of passenger trains there, but there are also problems for freight. Trucks have taken over cargo transportation because they have the ability to deliver door to door.”
But, according to the professor, it is still possible to reverse the situation so that the future of logistics in Brazil is more efficient. “A balance between modes would be the key point for a transport policy, combining rail, road and river. Having a load and transporting it by the most appropriate mode in a fully integrated transport system”, says Guimarães.
Mr. Orlando provides the solution assertively. “In the past, there was a cartoon called 'The Jetsons' on TV. [The animation] It was futuristic, it already had underground, land and air transport, all working well. That’s what we should have”, concludes the former train driver.