CPTM invests to change image
Valor Econômico 05/22/2009
The changes are presented by the State Government as part of a great "expansion plan" of the metropolitan transport, which includes the great works of the Subway - like line 4, crossing the west region -, and some corridors of the company of urban buses, the EMTU. Of the total of R$ 20 billion (US$ 9.5 billion) foreseen in the plan between 2007 and 2010, the CPTM got 7.3 billion (US$ 3.5 billion) - but the project does not foresee any inch to be added to current network. The plan is to change rails, to renew the fleet and to make the service of the company into something more similar to the service offered by the Subway. From the 260 km of lines of the CPTM, the plan foresees 160 km with quality similar to that of the Subway.
The new plan of disbursements allowed some great acquisitions: in 2007, Spanish CAF won a R$ 1.1 billion (US$ 570 million) contract to deliver 48 new trains to the company, produced in a plant installed in Hortolândia, in the interior of the State. This year, the company plans on launching its first Public-Private Partnership (PPP), for the construction of 24 trains and the remodeling of another 12 units of line 8, the second most active of the network, and where almost nothing has been done so far.With the new acquisitions, the number of trains in operation has gone from 105 to 110. Until 2010 another 57 units should arrive, allowing some of the old ones to be taken for remodeling. According to the operational director of the CPTM, Mário Fioratti, the stainless steel trains can be remodeled and go back to operation at 60% of the price of a new unit. Since 2007 the CPTM replaced the manual control of the lines by an operational system identical to that of the Subway, the Automatic Train Operation (ATO), installed in three of its seven routes. In line 11, the East express, the line of the network with most traffic, the waiting period fell from 12 to 5 minutes in the rush hours. The company has been observing an increase in the traffic of passengers at "Chinese" rates, of 10% to 15% a year. The increase is in part due to the growth of the economy in the last years, but in part to the improvement of the offer and to the release of a repressed demand. In 2005, the CPTM carried 1.2 million passengers a day, and today it carries 2 million. The company foresees it should end 2010 at 2.7 million - getting near to the current traffic of the Subways.