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Railway improvements concluded in the eastern Algarve

trainRefer, the national railway company said today that it had finished upgrading the railway line between Olhão and Vila Real de Santo António in the Algarve.

In a carefully timed press announcement, the company said that the €2.9 million contract was designed to “strengthen security and improve timeliness along on the line serving the eastern Algarve where trains now can move faster.”

"This intervention allows for greater flexibility, capacity and availability. The Algarve line is now equipped with the most modern command and control signalling technology, leaving the safety of rail solely dependent on human factors," explained Refer in a rather concerning statement.

The spokesman added that the modernisation of the line "increases speeds, particularly on the approach to stations" and "eliminates or mitigates the potential risk to the public" at some level crossings.

Some freight trains may not halt in Olhão at all and Refer says these will travel at 90 kmph through the city. Refer spokeswoman Susana Abrantes said that trains will be travelling at 90kmph when they used to travel at 30kmph and will approach the station at faster speeds than before. Olhão station is about 100 metres from the crossing in question and locals say that the trains will have slowed down sufficiently for safe crossings still to be made. 

These comments are in direct response to the violent response by some of Olhão’s more active citizens to the fencing that Refer keeps erecting to stop pedestrians crossing the track near the station.

"It will result, in addition to enhanced security conditions, in an improvement in the quality of provision, with regard to the timeliness and the reliability of operation, benefiting mobility in the region," the company stated in a communication so dull it seemed designed to remove the will to live.

The work is part of an investment plan (2007-2014) in the Algarve line costing €35 million and which also will see "the rehabilitation of the track, the heightening of platforms, the closing and reclassification of crossings and specific improvements in station buildings," hopefully including toilets which will cheer local MP Mendes Bota who has been a critic of the lack of such facilities, mentioning the Linea do Algarve's lack of 'comfort zones' in sporadic outbursts in Parliament.

The one black spot on Refers brave new world has been the attempted closure of the pedestrian walkway located adjacent to Olhão station on one of the main avenues into and out of the city used by hundreds of people every day.

Locals claim that the suggested alternative, a steep underpass which becomes slipperly when wet and floods when it rains, "offers no conditions" for people with reduced mobility, since it is an underpass for vehicles not push chairs, buggies, bicycles, prams, wheelchairs and the overweight such is its restricted width redcuing to 1 metre at the lowest point.

Refer says that the trains now entering Olhão station are going much faster than before and do represent a risk to people crossing the railway track at the old crossing. The thought of trains entering the station at a less dramatic speeds has not yet been born.

The locals approach can be summarised as ‘do us a favour and stop treating us like idiots' – there has been no known accident at this crossing since time began and the only current danger is the deep trench Refer has dug at the pedestrian crossing in a juvenile attempt to deter locals. Needless to say, this spiteful act by the state railway company has had the opposite affect.

The mayor of Olhão, António Pina, said that the security risk that Refer claims could "be combated with a new visual and audible alarm system."

Refer now has spent its upgrade budget and will continue to spend as the fencing it erects to stop pedestrians is removed shortly afterwards.

Investment in a barrier with lights and bells will not be forthcoming and the game of cat and mouse over fencing will continue until Refer either gives up, or does indeed build a Berlin Wall.

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Comments  

+1 #1 Fred. 2014-10-31 10:52
It is sad that the Beja line south cannot be re-worked and then reopened. Much of it already has been re-gravelled - but now in places heavily overgraown.

All it needs is drive and imagination and a valuable tourism project could bring Algarvian tourism up into the lower Alentejo. And vice versa.

Presumably some big landowners do not want the great unwashed crossing their estates ?

Who do we write to with this brilliant idea of 'sustainable tourism' ???

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