In the study of the Independent Technical Commission (CTI) two more possible locations for the new Lisbon airport were included. Beja and Alverca are now also being analyzed.
Beja and Alverca entered the list of possible locations for the new Lisbon airport, following proposals to the Independent Technical Commission (CTI) responsible for strategic environmental assessment, which will analyze them, one of the CTI coordinators told Lusa.
We are going to analyze other options that, meanwhile, have also come to us as proposals […] and the resolution of the Council of Ministers provided for it, that we decided what other proposals we would analyze and, therefore, we will analyze it as well, at least more Alverca and more Bejathey have already arrived”, said, in an interview with Lusa, professor Rosário Macário, who is part of the CTI that will carry out the strategic environmental evaluation for the expansion of the airport in the Lisbon region.
The CTI’s general coordinator is Professor Rosário Partidário and has a team of six technical coordinators, including university professor Rosário Macário, a specialist in Transportation Systems Planning and Operation, who was responsible for coordinating the airport planning area.
Created at the end of last year, the CTI, installed in the National Civil Engineering Laboratory (LNEC), in Lisbon, currently listens to “all relevant entities on the subject”, to arrive at a set of criteria that “will serve to analyze the various hypotheses”, explained Rosário Macário.
“We are currently open to receiving proposals from entities or groups interested in presenting development proposals that we will analyze. In the first phase, we analyze them all with a set of criteria, then the result of this first phase will be that we are left with a reduced number of alternatives that will later be evaluated in greater depth”, underlines the professor from the Higher Technical Institute (IST).
The resolution of the Council of Ministers approved last year defined the constitution of a CTI to analyze five hypotheses for the solution of the Lisbon airport (Portela + Montijo; Montijo + Portela; Alcochete; Portela + Santarém; Santarém), but provided that they could be added Other options .
According to the technical coordinator, in the coming weeks, the proponents of all the alternatives will present their projects in detail to the CTI and the Monitoring Commission, directed by engineer Carlos Mineiro Aires.
“At the end of March, we will carry out 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 conclusions of the CTI must be closed until November, after which they go to the public discussion phase.
Asked if it makes 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, the university professor pointed out that physical distance is not the most relevant factor .
“The most relevant are always the accessibilities in time and the 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, the modes of transport and the travel solutions”, he stressed. According to Rosário Macário, any of the hypotheses “implies rethinking the accessibilities”.
Other factors to take into account in the analysis are, he listed, the cost of the infrastructure, the impacts it generates and the potential for expansion. “We are working on a 50-year horizon and in 50 years a lot changes, the technology changes, a lot changes and, therefore, the cost, obviously, is a relevant factor, but it is not the only factor,” he said.
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Asked if the expansion capacity is a factor that excludes the possibility of Montijo, Rosário Macário said that it is a place that “has a limited capacity, for the moment”, but “it all depends on what can be done”, not being excluded. “It is not excluded, nor is it chosen,” he stressed.
In the case of having to build an airport from scratch, the specialist estimates that, from the time the decision is made, until a new airport can be fully operational, “ten, 12 years, or maybe a little” may pass. a little more”.
“If we look at the cases of recent airport development, we have cases in which they were developed in eight years, ten years, we have others that took 18 and 20 years, so it all depends on whether there are contracting-type problems, of an expropriatory nature,” he warned.
Source: Observadora
