Local elections: PS candidate says TGV consortium wants to carry out 135 demolitions in Gaia

The PS candidate for the Vila Nova de Gaia City Council, João Paulo Correia, told Lusa today that the Avan Norte consortium, which will build the high-speed line, wants to carry out 135 demolitions in the municipality.

"The number I have was provided to me by parish council presidents who are monitoring the consortium's contacts in Vila Nova de Gaia, and it seems truly avoidable to us. It's a number that was never on the table, which is around 135 demolitions," the candidate told Lusa today.

According to João Paulo Correia, the impacts cover housing, industries and warehouses in the parishes (or unions of parishes) of Oliveira do Douro, Mafamude and Vilar do Paraíso, Canelas, Serzedo and Perosinho and Grijó and Sermonde, and the number appears from consortium data dated the second half of July.

Lusa questioned the Avan Norte consortium on the matter and is awaiting a response.

"The latest version presented by the consortium, just a few weeks old, has a much greater impact on the region, meaning it will lead to the demolition of more homes and industries than the consortium had ever presented before," said João Paulo Correia.

For the Socialist candidate, "the Government must intervene in this matter and create conditions so that the high-speed line in Vila Nova de Gaia can be built with the least possible intrusion into the territory."

"The number of demolitions planned exceeds the number that the consortium has ever proposed to Vila Nova de Gaia, and in this regard, we urge the Government to participate in the process," he said.

The candidate recalls that “the Government is in a position to intervene, through Infraestuturas de Portugal [IP], so that the consortium can design a line in Vila Nova de Gaia in a less invasive way”.

The preliminary study for the first public-private partnership (PPP) for the high-speed railway line, between Porto and Oiã (in Oliveira do Bairro, Aveiro district) envisaged that most of the route would be tunneled through a large part of the municipality of Vila Nova de Gaia, over almost 10 kilometers.

However, in April the LusoLAV consortium (now called Avan Norte), composed of the companies Mota-Engil, Teixeira Duarte, Alves Ribeiro, Casais, Conduril and Gabriel Couto, presented to the Gaia City Council a route with less tunnel and more impacts on the surface, as well as suggesting a change in the location of the Gaia station (Vilar do Paraíso and not Santo Ovídio), and two bridges over the Douro River instead of a road-rail bridge.

"Comparing the two solutions, there is a three-fold increase in surface impact, increasing from the previous 2,540 meters of planned line in the landfill, excavation and wall areas to 7,728 meters in length," can also be read in the documents of the LusoLAV proposal to which Lusa had access in April.

The documents also pointed out, in April, that “the layout adjustments in the solution now proposed did not imply an increase in the number of affected areas” for new or recently refurbished homes, but as for “common type homes in relatively good condition, the layout adjustments in the solution now proposed apparently imply a slight increase in the number of affected areas”, but without quantifying them at the time.

The solution presented in April already "clashed with already built residential and industrial areas, with the existing fabric and the roads of the current road structure, requiring a diverse set of road restoration solutions in order to minimize the impact of the territorial barrier created, which is, in this solution, more extensive," the documents state.

"The impact is not limited to the linear extension of the infrastructure, but also to the area bordering it," also implying "expropriations and demolitions in the intervention zones, whether for the effective implementation of the high-speed line, or due to the dimensional need for work areas for its construction," it states.