CP's Administrative Council, composed by Carlos Nogueira, Abrantes Machado and Ana Malhó, is leaving office and the government is already looking for a new team.
Having contacted the company, the official source only answered that "they have no information on the matter" and the Ministry of Planning and Infrastructures hasn't yet answered Público's questions regarding the issue and how it's being dealt with.
Carlos Nogueira started office in CP in July 1, 2017, right at the inauguration of the Vouga Historic Train, and at the time said that his priorities was creating a strategic plan for the company and buy new rolling stock.
In regards to his position concerning the strategy of his predecessor, Manuel Queiró, the new public railway company's president assured that his management wouldn't be opposite to that of the former president, since "we shouldn't change what is already right".
The consensus between the two strategies was the reality that CP needed new and more trains. In particular two types: long haul stock to keep the company competitive when facing the liberalization of the passenger railway transport in the EU, bound for 2019/2020, and medium haul stock to replace the ageing DMU's.
But, during the course of a year, nothing happened, and CP's situation just got worse with the inoperability of EMEF (the in-house maintenance company), uncapable to keep and maintain the company's fleet given the reluctance of the successive state governments to allow for the employment of missing and additional workers.
The first warning signs came even during Manuel Queirós management. Since January 2017 that the Oeste line suffered disruptions almost in a daily basis. Not long after this symptom spread to Alentejo and Algarve.
Even though there were problems at the time, the railway operation during summer time in 2017 went without major constraints, though the company was seeing itself in a situation were it couldn't handle an ever increasing demand. It stopped answering to charter requests (due to missing stock) and even refused selling group discount tickets in the Oeste line given how unpredictable the service was becoming.
The issues plaguing EMEF later impacted the long haul services (InterCity and Alfa). First degrading the comfort level of the service, with broken toilets, jammed doors and failing air-con and lamps.
The reason: trains were running short, and to cut on the downtime the maintenance procedures started focusing only on security and, to a certain degree, reliability. Everything else was left to stress for more time before eventual replacement.
But even this efforts weren't able to keep the service to suffer disruptions. For a few months the InterCity bound for Évora started being replaced by UTE's from regional services. (TL note: short to medium haul EMU's)
This same low standard stock also started replacing both InterCity and Alfa trains between Lisbon and Guarda, and the final stretch between Porto and Braga.
During this Spring, CP was already approaching the rupture point, with passengers left lost in stations from the Oeste, Alentejo and Algarve lines, waiting for trains that never arrived, due to successive disruptions. Same started impacting commuter services in the capital of the country, Lisbon.
Still, many were the times that both the President of CP and the Minister for Planning and Infrastructures announced the purchase of new trains, without such ever becoming a Specification Book and subsequent Public Tender.
After several contacts by Público, neither the company nor the government ever given details about what and how many trains were going to be bought. The former administration proposed, in a report called "CP XXI", to the government, in March 2017, 35 new high tech trains, of which 10 were for long haul and the remaining for medium haul. (TL note: capable of running in different gauges, electric currents and either electrified and non-electrified lines)
But recently it was investigated that the government is disregarding the long haul service, leaving the most lucrative component of the company helpless against future competition (and opening the door for its privatisation, as admitted by both conservative and right wings of the Portuguese politics).
Summer time without trains
The resignation of the current CP's administration council happens at a moment where the company was forced to cut services in all lines, particularly Cascais, Sintra, Algarve and Oeste, due to lack of active rolling stock.
The goal was to avoid disruptions, adjusting the timetable to the available fleet, improving the reliability of the service. But problems started to happen due to gross errors, where connecting services ended up mismatched, arriving minutes after the other train had already departed.
For example, the 6:16 train in Lagos should arrive in Faro at 7:59, 11 minutes after the connecting service to Vila Real de Santo António had already departed. The next service only departing 58 minutes later.
In the Oeste Line, the company closed the service that has had the biggest demand in recent years: the trains that went from Caldas da Rainha to Coimbra. To make the same journey, one has to catch two different trains. For those bound to Figueira da Foz, it's now three in total, one of them only running for just 3 quilometres (TL note: about 1.8 miles).
The government had already announced that these services would be fully reestablished in September. (TL note: Given how the gov is pretty much unaware of the harsh reality that CP is going through, I doubt that these services will ever be fully reestablished next month).
The government also announced the employment of 102 workers to EMEF, though the impact on the recovery of the whole fleet, specially of the completely broken units, should only be felt after the end of 2018. (TL note: It has been denounced as well that 62 of those 102 workers are already employees of EMEF, but with precarious contracts, another scandal that has plagued the country since the crisis of 2011, and which the government has been using as a false employment scheme, since precarious employees weren't even considered as employees of their respective companies, creating the false impression that both public and private companies are increasing their workforce)
Government and CP have also announced that they'll be renting trains to Spain while the new trains aren't built, but even this comes pretty late given that the rented trains could only be allowed to run services after the end of 2018. Until then, CP has to live with few, very old trains, with the aggravating factor that some of these fleets are approaching the mid-life mileage limit, rendering these fleets unusable until a lengthy, very expensive refurbishment maintenance is applied. (TL note: something that needs to be allowed by the government. And given how they are reluctant to do whatever is needed in time... )
