Opinion.
Unfortunately, the affection we can feel for CP does not pay bills or move passengers. It’s time to launch a serious debate about what it will be like to ride a train in Portugal in 2030.
I would like to make one early warning: it is undoubtedly a good sign that in recent years the public debate has devoted more attention to the railway sector and trains as a mode of transport that structures our mobility. However, I think the time has come to talk seriously about the (much) that we have been pushing with our belly.
At the beginning of April, we learned about the Government program that should guide transport sector policies for the coming years, and included in that same document, There is a phrase that should arouse particular interest:
“Create a new operating model in passenger rail transport, decentralizing the management of transport services of an eminently local nature, as well as substantially reducing barriers to the entry of new competitors.”
– program of the 24th Constitutional Government
This apparent small detail in the program is, in fact, the result of a long debate that has existed about the way in which the country has been managing its passenger rail service. Let’s do it by steps.
The lack of competition
For the overwhelming majority of Portuguese people, riding a train is synonymous with CP – Comboios de Portugal. The public operator that in recent decades has been hegemonic in providing the service arrives in 2024 and in the hands of the new Government in a frankly delicate position.
After a historic fight for the most basic justice, CP finally achieved a public service contract and the repayment of the brutal debt it carried, after years of operating without being compensated for its work. These small, big victories, despite being notable, cannot hide other harsh realities that are being heard. In fact, despite this historic milestone, which allowed CP to achieve its first profitable results in 2022 and 2023, the company finds itself at a point of wear and tear and lack of coordination that should worry any citizen who aspires to a future for the railway in Portugal.
In fact, the public service contract that CP currently has (drawn up by the previous PS Government) is a double-ended dick. On the one hand, it helped CP to clean up its financial situation and be able to operate in a minimally sustainable way; on the other hand, it practically handed over a monopoly position over service to the company on a platter.
At the time, almost no one raised any major questions in relation to this – also due to the general public’s habituation to CP holding this almost monopoly on the service. Still, This “delivery on a platter” hardly proved positive for taxpayers, users and, even at the limit, for CP itself.
According to European Union guidelines (which reflect nothing more than the most basic common sense), public transport services (in this case, rail) must always be subject to contracting via public tender. In other words, the State, as the contracting party, must search the market for an operator, public or private, that provides a pre-defined and thought-out set of services, for which it financially rewards the operator, penalizing him in case of non-compliance with the contract.
Now, the Portuguese State not only did not do this when it handed over the almost monopolistic service to CP, but it does not even deign to do so for the only exception to this monopoly: the suburban service on the 25 de Abril Bridge, between Lisbon and Setúbal, which It is handed over to Fertagus, a company in the Barraqueiro group that has seen its contract renewed over and over again without a public tender.
The new Government is therefore absolutely right to say that there has in fact been no competition or any kind of incentive for new players to enter the passenger rail sector. Contrary to what a group of stubborn people are babbling about gauges, the real obstacle to the entry of new players in the national market it has been the narrow-minded and protectionist vision that the Portuguese State has applied by never seriously reviewing the railway service it has contracted.
Resource scarcity
CP has thus operated its contract under the apparent protection of the State, but which, from a certain point of view, It looks more like a kind of captivity. In fact, CP has lived for many years under a obvious scarcity of resources – both financial and human or even physical. The company’s staff is aging. The possible maintenance is carried out, with parts arriving in drops, inside workshops where it rains inside. Passenger satisfaction is reflected by the spectacular operational results of Rede Expressos and Flixbus in recent years, which, faced with a CP of stagnant and unreliable supply, are enjoying growing demand.
In the suburban scene, the constant suspensions due to breakdowns, interspersed with the periodic, but always present, strikes by train drivers and inspectors, undermine confidence in the service, to the point where the company becomes a target for ridicule. The record numbers of cars entering Lisbon and Porto daily will corroborate what I’m saying (by the way, how many of you, dear readers, are aware that some schedules cut during the Troika era were never even restored?).
The rolling stock is between old and very old. And due to the State’s desire to save a few bucks, the new trains will only arrive in significant numbers at the end of the decade. It should be noted that even the new material will not allow significant increases in supply as it is mainly intended for the urgent replacement of the most worn-out fleets.
Even the fuss and avalanche of propaganda surrounding the recovery of older rolling stock has proven to be a handful. The Arco carriages leave Guifões incessantly, with the program being significantly delayed. Not to mention the Intercidades carriages, which have been outdated for 15 years. and the first prototype of a renovation has been pushed to the corners of the workshops for about two years. The recoveries of the Schindler carriages (which, in fact, are historical material, but CP likes to sell as a more retro regional service) and the 2600 locomotives, which are basically filling holes in InterRegional services, get away with it; and who occasionally save the Intercidades when a 5600 locomotive screams.
Three important points
CP can have a smile on her face, but that smile is tied up by wires. And this situation is not only a reason to rethink CP, but also a reason to seriously rethink what type of public railway service we want in Portugal.
Firstly – and this opinion is not at all political – the monopoly should end. The Portuguese State cannot simply continue handing over a service of this caliber, without any kind of serious supervision of the contract, to a tired and outdated company, rife with internal problems. Restructuring CP from top to bottom may be an option, but it does not exclude that the service has to be contracted under a concession model, through a fair and transparent competition in which other interested actors can participate.
Secondly, the excessive concentration of the service in a single contract is also a factor in problems. It does not make sense to mix services as distinct as suburban, regional and long-distance services (Intercidades and Alfa Pendular) in a single contract. In areas of high concentration of service such as metropolitan areas, it should be the respective metropolitan transport authorities that define and coordinate the rail service (the end of regional suburban units announced a few years ago as a panacea to unite the company, few or none results demonstrated that there are no different stickers on the head of the train).
Thirdly, the critical situation of rolling stock, in addition to a massive investment by the state in its renewal effort, also requires rethinking the usage model. As no competitor for a concession will buy trains to operate them for a short period of time, a concession model has become commonplace across Europe in which the State or regional authority owns the rolling stock, leasing it to the winning operator for a price fixed in advance. In fact, we already have this model here, since Fertagus trains belong indirectly to the State. (The question of whether maintenance is provided by a centralized State entity or by the operator already requires some case-by-case analysis, as it depends on the scale of the fleets owned.)
What do I mean by all this? That our classic vision of dumping the entire burden of railway service on CP is completely obsolete and the supposed reforms carried out in recent years seem to have only served to make some of its problems official in writing and consolidate a kind of “armed wing of the trains”, which sadly serves as a propaganda tool in front of the cameras.
With the exception of the huge know-how accumulated in the maintenance area (formerly provided by EMEF and later integrated into CP), it is difficult to understand what is usable in the CP structure. Mostly obsolete rolling stock? Your small, old-fashioned facilities? An operational management that trivializes delays and does not speed up problem resolution?
Unfortunately, the affection we can feel for CP does not pay bills or move passengers. It’s time to launch a serious debate about what it will be like to ride a train in Portugal in 2030. It is not an easy reform to make, especially because the political debate is given over to the most elementary childishness and clubitewith the most timid of reforms ready to be dubbed as an attack on public affairs, precisely by the people who ruined it until it reached this point of ruin.
Some ideas
But, anyway, here I leave some ideas merely cooked in my head:
- Maybe it’s time to have a centrally coordinated service, but divided into execution units that are easier to manage. On the one hand, Regional and InterRegional divided into North, Center and South units. For another, suburban areas governed in a decentralized manner in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra. Lastly, Intercidades revised and possibly subsidizing only those operating in more remote regions (yes, why should the State pay someone to operate completely profitable services between Lisbon and Porto?).
- Maybe it’s time we think of CP not as this strange aggregation of parties trying to form a company, but as a brand of railway service, universal and with uniform language, communication and ticketing throughout the territorywhich can integrate different regional operators;
- Perhaps we can rethink the old EMEF as this brute force that, through several decentralized hubs, manages to ensure the maintenance of railway fleets spread across the country. And ultimately as a knowledge factory, combined with the promised new railway skills center, but without strange projects, such as the “Portuguese Train”, whose usefulness and relevance within CP are yet to be explained.
If we leave our trenches of fundamentalism aside, perhaps we can dream and think of a country where taking the train is a first choice and not a strange relic that we keep for those who cannot afford a car.
Perhaps you can think of a country in which it gives pleasure and pride to ride a train, whether or not that train has a spectacular logo saying “CP” on the side.
