The São Paulo Metropolitan Railway Company CPTM, a company linked to the Secretariat of Metropolitan Transport of the State of São Paulo (STM), is continuing with its project to expand the city’s Line 13, known as Jade, a 12.2-kilometre route that will connect the city centre with Guarulhos International Airport and is expected to carry 130,000 passengers every weekday. The Chinese-Brazilian consortium Temoinsa-Sifang is manufacturing eight new trains for this line which are specially designed with extra space for transporting the luggage of future users. The manufacture in China and the delivery and assembly of the trains is being carried out under the supervision of the CS8T Spanish-Brazilian consortium made up of Ineco, Ineco do Brasil, EBEI and MetroEng.

The rolling stock, which is being manufactured at CRRC Sifang’s facilities, was purchased by the State Government of São Paulo in September 2017 for 316.7 million reales with 85 million euros of financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB). With each train equipped with eight carriages, this fleet will provide shuttle services between São Paulo’s International Airport, the largest in Latin America, and the city of São Paulo.

In January 2019, a team of Ineco technicians travelled to the facilities of CRRC Sifang –a public railway manufacturer based in Qingdao, China– to oversee the delivery of the first train in the 2500 series. The rolling stock is very much in line with the latest acquisitions of STM/CPTM, which feature distributed traction and steel boxes, and complementing the recent deliveries of 30 Hyundai trains and 35 trains from the Spanish company CAF, both also financed by the EIB. This will give CPTM a more modern and versatile fleet, which will be put into service over the next two years. After disembarking at the Port of Santos, the new rolling stock is transported by road to CPTM’s facilities for dynamic track testing.

The assembly of the eight trains in CRRC Sifang’s factory is slated for completion in the first months of 2020, and CPTM will then continue with the acceptance and commissioning of the vehicles, which must be completed by the beginning of 2022.

The work of the CS8T Consortium includes reviewing the vehicle design and supervising static and dynamic testing, which will be ongoing both at the factory and on the track until the trains are put into service. To this end, Ineco technicians are carrying out manufacturing inspection activities at CRRC Sifang’s facilities and static and dynamic testing both at the factory in Qingdao and at CPTM’s facilities in Presidente Altino, São Paulo. A team of technicians from Ineco has also carried out a design review from its offices in Spain.

The supervisors have to make sure from the outset that the assembled rolling stock meets the technical specifications and needs of CPTM. They also need to have a detailed knowledge of international and Brazilian railway regulations, as well as the regulations that apply to each of the main and auxiliary elements of the structure –boxes, axles, wheels, etc.– equipment and systems: traction, braking, train safety, passenger information, driving, emergency, etc. The supervision process must guarantee reliability and the technical compatibility of all elements.

Ineco has extensive expertise in this field, as well as professionals with specific knowledge of each of the components that make it possible for a train to operate safely and comfortably for users. This experience extends to all varieties of rolling stock from all suppliers: Alstom, Bombardier, CAF, Siemens, etc.

Everything in Brazil is enormous: its territory, the fifth largest on the planet; the largest hydrographical basin –the Amazon River and its thousands of tributaries–
covering half of the country; and its economy, the ninth most powerful in the world.

It is the world’s leading producer of coffee and sugar cane, the fourth largest of wood and one of the largest soybean producers, which attracts numerous multinational companies from the agri-food and biofuels industries; the agricultural sector represents just 5% of GDP, but it accounts for 40% of exports. Brazil also has a powerful industrial sector that contributes a quarter of GDP. It produces oil, aluminium and coal, and its textile, aeronautics, pharmaceutical, automotive, steel and chemical industries are also very important.

All of these goods travel through a network of 1.5 million kilometres of roads, 29,000 kilometres of railways, 32 public ports and 128 private ports, more than 4,000 airports and aerodromes and a network of 28,400 kilometres of waterways , including cabotage (coastal navigation) routes.

The federal government’s objective is to plan the considerable investment required by this immense transport network as effectively as possible in order to reduce logistics costs and thus increase the country’s competitiveness. To this end, it has launched the National Transport and Logistics Observatory (ONTL) through the public entity EPL (Empresa de Planejamento e Logistica), part of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Brazil, with which Ineco has collaborated.

Thanks to the ONTL, planners –and the general public– can consult the website www.ontl.epl.gov.br/index.php at any time for invaluable information to facilitate the decision-making process when it comes to optimising investment in infrastructure. For example, if data indicates that agricultural production, a type of large volume freight, is increasing, how can the waterway and port network be strengthened to transport it more cheaply and sustainably? And when improving the road network, in which regions has the demand for transport increased the most? How does the evolution of the country’s economy influence logistics costs?

These are just some examples of the usefulness of a transport observatory, an entity that more and more countries, including Spain, are creating, and which also collects very useful data provided by satellite tracking systems on the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, information on fuel prices or the production of all kinds of goods, freight and passenger movements, tariffs and freight costs behaviour, average transport costs, macroeconomic indicators, etc. All of this data is provided by both large companies in the country and the different departments and public bodies of federal and state government that participate in the observatory, and is then processed and organised for easy consultation on the website.

The ONTL is the result of cooperation between the governments of Spain and Brazil, which have maintained close economic relations since the 1990s, with strong investment flows between both countries. Collaboration on transport infrastructure has crystallised in the signing of multiple agreements since 2012. As a result, in 2014, Ineco carried out a study to calculate transport costs on Brazil’s waterways. With the ONTL, Ineco transmits the knowledge it has
accumulated since 2013 in the Observatory that it designed and runs for the Spain’s Ministry of Public Works.

The Brazilian observatory gathers data from more than 50 sources of information supplied by numerous agents related to infrastructure, operations, security, financing and other key aspects of the Brazilian transport and logistics system: airport authorities and concessionaires, ports and roads, ministries and governmental entities, the police, merchant marine, sectoral associations and large public and private companies that represent the principal industrial sectors (oil, aeronautics, mining, automotive, etc.). All of these sources generate valuable knowledge that is disseminated in work sessions, specialised workshops and seminars, data panels, an annual newsletter, etc. and is collected on the website for consultation.

As in the case of the Spanish observatory, Ineco designed the information collection and processing system and the database and website, which is open to both sector agents and the general public. It has also developed a set of indicators which serve to harmonise data from different sources and facilitate the analysis of information and its dissemination.