Serra announces construction of the Santos-Guarujá tunnel for this year
O Estado de S. Paulo - 01/28/2009
The works of the construction of the Santos-Guarujá tunnel will start until the end of the year. The guarantee was given yesterday by Governor José Serra (PSDB), during the opening of the Roberto Mário Santini Municipal Park, located at the José Menino Beach, in Santos. According to Serra, the bidding for the construction, estimated at nearly R$ 450 million (US$ 195.7 million) will be held this semester. Yesterday, the Press Office of the Secretary of Transports Mauro Arce informed that he confirmed the announcement, but he would make no comments about it. In the event, Serra recognized the barges are a "precarious means" for making the crossing that, lately, mainly during the high season, have been receiving many complaints from users, not only from tourists, but mainly from the inhabitants of Santos and Guarujá, who sometimes have to wait up to an hour in the ferryboat lines. However, Serra guaranteed that the barges will not be put out of operation after the tunnel is built. "The idea is to keep them as a complementary means of transportation", he said. A recent study made by the Brazilian Tunneling Committee (CBT, in Portuguese) shows it is a low complexity construction that can be paid in 15 years, by means of a concession to the private initiative - the Government would waive the collection of the fares paid for the barges, currently managed by Dersa. When the works are finished, the crossing time will be reduced from 20 to 1 minute. The same study points to a traffic of 8 million vehicles and 4 million bicycles a year between the cities.