Spanish Company Signs Contract to Resume Work on Line 6 of São Paulo Subway

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Eight months after announcing that the Spanish company Acciona would take over the works and operation of the subway‘s 6-orange line, the government of São Paulo finally reached the time of signing the contract with the contractor over the weekend.

This signals the end of a drama that unlocks a stretch of public transportation that has endured all sorts of setbacks in a decade, from Lava Jato’s impact on the original consortium to the attempts of a homeowner in a wealthy neighborhood to block opening of a station claiming it would cause homeless to go there.

From Tuesday. July 7th, Acciona will take over the line concession and will be responsible for the work sites, taking over from the former Move São Paulo consortium. The group can restart the work in 90 days.

The agreement was also celebrated within the government for its potential to mitigate the high unemployment generated by the coronavirus crisis. A total of 9,000 jobs are expected to be created.

“The completion of the negotiations between MoveSP and Acciona consolidates the João Doria government’s goal to restart the works in 2020,” says Alexandre Baldy, secretary of the São Paulo metropolitan transportation department.

Among the largest infrastructure projects in Latin America, the line is 15 kilometers long, with 15 stations that run along major higher education institutions in the city of São Paulo, making it known as the university line. It also connects with Brasilândia, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city.

The project became famous in 2010, when a resident of Higienópolis, member of a group protesting against the construction of a station in her tony neighborhood, said the subway would attract “differentiated people” to the neighborhood, in reference to homeless street dwellers.

In 2016, the project stopped and remained so for years, while the São Paulo government tried to rescind the contract with the companies in the former consortium formed by Odebrecht, Queiroz Galvão, and UTC, all of which were involved in the Lava Jato scandal. Then Acciona came in to take over.

The project suffered so many setbacks that it was eventually considered obsolete several times in its long history, since it was first announced in 2008 in the José Serra administration, which had vowed to launch it in 2012. Last week, Governor João Doria published a decree establishing the expiry of the old Move São Paulo concession on Tuesday, July 7th, which now makes way for the Spanish company.

Source: Folhapress