The Iberian Railway Alliance is going to put forward a proposal to governments and soccer federations to make trains the main means of transport at the 2030 World Cup.
“A World Cup for the Climate” is the name of the initiative, which will be presented today in Lisbon and Barcelona, bearing in mind that Portugal, Spain and Morocco will host the competition in 2030.
One of the proposals is the creation of “green tickets”, a pass for the games, with rail transport included and other public transport for travel within the cities, at a lower price than the “brown ticket”, by option, without transport included, Acácio Pires, head of the Zero association, which is part of the Iberian Alliance, told Lusa.
The crossing to Morocco would be made by sea, always avoiding transportation by plane, he added.
“For now, as part of the Alliance, we will make the necessary representations to the federations in Portugal and Spain, but we also need the involvement of the governments,” said Acácio Pires.
The next world championships, he said, must achieve concrete goals for carbon neutrality: “They need to rely less on emissions offsets and more on real reductions.”
One way to achieve climate goals is to reduce emissions in the transport sector, he stressed. Intervention in the way people travel to cities is considered fundamental.
“In addition to the national associations and green tickets, we are trying to draw the attention of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) to act responsibly,” he added.
The Alliance hopes that the new government will go ahead with the investments already planned for the railroads and that it will launch the new Lisbon-Madrid high-speed link called for by the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas.
The three countries, the signatories of the proposal point out, have “an extensive rail network”, which allows the majority of journeys between stadiums and neighboring countries to be made by this route, with the lowest emissions per passenger and per kilometer.
“The problem of climate change and its serious effects in these three countries makes it absolutely necessary for the 2030 World Cup to be organized with a strong reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the travel of national soccer teams and their fans,” reads a statement released by the platform, which brings together 21 social, trade union, economic and environmental organizations from Spain and Portugal, with the aim of improving rail services on the peninsula.
The Alliance is calling on governments to coordinate to ensure a direct link between the host cities by rail.
By 2030, with the investments planned in the infrastructure plans for Portugal and Spain, only four of the 12 most important cities on the Iberian Peninsula will be more than six and a half hours away, considered “the maximum time for a daytime train journey to be competitive with air travel”, and only one of them will be more than eight hours away, according to the estimates presented. “To further reduce these journey times, it is crucial to speed up the investments in the high-speed network promised since 2003 by the governments of Durão Barroso and José Maria Aznar,” Zero said in a statement.
