The global investment in the project that is underway is 200 million euros, an official source from Metro Mondego told Lusa, of which 117 million are in basic infrastructure and 34 million in electric buses.
Metro Mondego, a project that has 30 years of advances and setbacks, has so far cost at least 327 million euros, including studies, administrative expenses and construction work, according to documents consulted by the Lusa agency.
Metro Mondego, which began to take shape in March 1994, in a diploma from Cavaco Silva’s last executive, intended to ensure a light surface metro connection serving the municipalities of Coimbra, Lousã and Miranda do Corvo.
However, over 30 years, it has seen various projects, studies and operating modalities, as well as advances and setbacks.
According to reports and accounts from Metro Mondego itself, the Court of Auditors’ audit of the project in 2011 and information provided by the responsible entities to the Lusa agency, the investment, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2025, accounts for a total of 327 million euros, 200 million euros of which in the current project being carried out, which abandoned the idea of a light metro and replaced it with an electric bus solution on a dedicated track.
The current venture, which was launched by the Government led by António Costa, definitively abandoned the idea of a light surface metro, and went ahead with the ‘metrobus’, a project that should cost 90 million euros, according to the study it supported the Government’s decision in 2017.
However, in 2020, when several projects were awarded, the estimate was already 130 million euros, with the completion of the suburban route expected by the end of the following year.
However, it was not only the deadlines that were revised, but also the global investment in the current project, which is now 200 million euros, an official source from Metro Mondego told Lusa, noting that, of the total value, 117 million of euros are in basic infrastructure, 34 million euros in electric buses and 15 million euros in other components, such as workshops or ticketing.
To these 200 million euros from the current project, there is an additional 104 million euros spent up until November 2010, when work on the initial project was suspended, due to the Government’s alleged lack of financial capacity, at a time of financial crisis.
According to an audit by the Court of Auditors carried out in 2011 on Metro Mondego, of the 104 million euros spent on the project, since its conception, ten million euros were invested in studies and projects, without there being any operation of a light rail system. On the ground.
The audit also shows that, between 1997 and 2010, Metro Mondego, as a company, spent 3.4 million euros on its board of directors, in a report that also reported alleged personal expenses with the company’s credit card by two members of the corporate bodies (who were acquitted in court, one due to the prescription of the crime of malfeasance).
After 2011, at a time when the Government was considering the extinction of Metro Mondego, the costs in the project were limited, for many years, to the payment of personnel expenses by the company, which reduced its workforce until 2019, when the project gained momentum again.
Between 2011 and 2023, according to Metro Mondego reports and accounts consulted by Lusa, almost ten million euros were spent on salaries, studies and other operational and administrative expenses.
From 2019 onwards, expenses increased again, to give the company the capacity to respond to a project that was beginning to materialize and in which it is responsible for some of the investments (it went from nine workers to 19, in 2023).
In addition to all these expenses, there is also an addition of 12.9 million euros in 14 years of road services as an alternative to the Ramal da Lousã, which stopped running in January 2010, awaiting a project that is expected to take place in less than two years can be completed, three decades and more than 300 million euros later.
