In a statement, the president of the Atlantic Axis, who is also the mayor of Viana do Castelo, announced that the “petition” sent to the Portuguese Minister of State and Foreign Affairs and the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and Transport was “positively received.”
The new bridge over the Minho River that will serve the Minho Line will be built east of Valença and Tui, but the exact location is yet to be determined, according to the Atlantic Axis. They added that “similarly, the final administrative procedures and the latest engineering and informative studies of the sections on both sides, between Porriño and the border on the Galician side, and between Ponte de Lima and the border on the Portuguese side, are yet to be completed.”
Luís Nobre recalls that a decade ago, “the Atlantic Axis proposed the construction of a new high-speed line between Ferrol (Galicia) and Lisbon, which would also have a station at Francisco Sá Carneiro airport.”
“This petition was first made in 2016 at a meeting between municipalities and businessmen at the Europarque in Santa Maria da Feira. Subsequently, at the Atlantic Axis General Assembly held in Maia in 2018, the proposal for the new line to have a station at Francisco Sá Carneiro airport was conveyed to António Costa’s government through the Minister of Environment, Matos Fernandes,” the statement adds.
According to the Atlantic Axis, “this line would be an alternative to the Minho line which, after its modernization and electrification, an initiative led by the Atlantic Axis, continued to have the handicap that travel times could only be improved to a limited extent due to bottlenecks between Valença and Porto, most of them without possible solutions. In parallel, several meetings were held with Spanish government officials to unblock the southern exit from Vigo.”
“This, which is history, is documented in the Atlantic Axis minutes and in the media archives, and it is important to know it at a time when the construction process is unblocked and progressing as planned, both on the Portuguese and Spanish sides. This merit belongs exclusively to the municipalities (especially those of the Atlantic Axis), civil society, and organizations that promote and defend the railway,” the statement concludes.