Beja and Alverca cross paths in the race for Lisbon’s new airport | Lisbon Airport
Beja and Alverca entered the list of possible locations for the Lisbon’s new airportafter proposals to the Independent Technical Commission (CTI) responsible for the strategic environmental assessment, which will analyze them, revealed one of the coordinators of that body.
“We are going to analyze other options that, however, have also arrived as proposals […] and the resolution of the Council of Ministers predicted this, that we decided that other proposals would analyze and, therefore, we will also analyze, at least more Alverca and more Beja, which have already reached us”, said Rosário Macario, from CTI.
This entity is coordinated by Rosário Partidário and has six technical coordinators on the team, one of whom is Rosário Macário, specialist in Planning and Operation of Transport Systems, responsible for coordinating the airport planning area.
Created at the end of 2022, and installed at the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering, in Lisbon, the CTI is currently listening to “all entities with testimony on the subject”, to arrive at a set of criteria that “will serve to analyze the chances“, explained Rosario Macario.
“Right now, we are open to receiving proposals from entities or groups interested in putting forward development proposals and which we will analyse. alternatives that will later be evaluated in greater depth”, underlined the same official, a professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST).
The resolution of the Council of Ministers approved in 2022 defines the constitution of a CTI to analyze five hypotheses for the Lisbon airport solution (Portela + Montijo; Montijo + Portela; Alcochete; Portela + Santarém; Santarém), and foresaw that others could be added options.
according to technical coordinatorin the coming weeks, proponents of all alternatives will present the projects in detail to the CTI and the Monitoring Commission, led by Carlos Mineiro Aires.
“By the end of March, we are going to make the first evaluation and, therefore, the first phase will end in April and from April there will be no more proposals”, highlighted Rosário Macário.
The reports with the CTI arrivals must be closed in November, after which the public discussion phase will take place.
Does it make sense to have a Lisbon airport far from the city, as, for example, in the case of Santarém or Beja, which are more than 80 kilometers away? This university professor points out that physical distance is not the most relevant factor.
“The most relevant are always accessibilities in time and in alternatives to get to the city from the airport. Obviously it is not desirable for it to be too far, but the distance in time is, let’s say, the main aspect and that depends on the offer that exists, the modes of transport and displacement solutions”, he stressed.
According to Rosário Macário, any of the hypotheses “implies rethinking accessibilities”. Other factors to take into account in the analysis are the cost of the infrastructure, the impacts generated and the potential for expansion.
“We are working on a horizon of 50 years and in 50 years a lot changes, technology changes, a lot changes and, therefore, cost, obviously a relevant factor, but it is not the only factor”, he added.
Asked whether the expansion capacity is a factor that excludes the possibility of Montijo, Rosário Macário said that it is a location that “has a limited capacity, at the moment”, but “it all depends on what can be done”, does not exclude. “It is neither excluded nor chosen”, he noted.
Building an airport from scratch will take “ten, 12 years or maybe a little more”, from the moment it was decided, until the moment when a new airport can be fully operational, he estimates.
“If we look at the development of recent airports, we have cases where they started in eight years, ten years, we have others that took 18 and 20, so it all depends on whether there are problems of a contracting nature, of an expropriation nature.”