Metro do Porto completes excavations for a new tunnel across the Vila River

Metro do Porto completed this Thursday the excavation of the Vila River Tunnel, promising to normalize the circulation of Musinho da Silveira Street by May and ensure that it can be used temporarily to divert water in extreme cases.

“Now we are going to move on to a new stage, which will consist of its cladding and finishing work. This is our schedule in terms of resolving the situation we find ourselves in here at Rua Mousinho. [da Silveira]”, is that it must be completely resolved by May next year,” Tiago Braga, president of Metro do Porto, told reporters this Thursday.

The person in charge spoke at the mouth of the new Vila River Tunnel, at the construction site of the new underground passage, the construction of which began in July 2022, next to Largo de São Domingos, accompanied by Filipe Araújo, Vice President of the Porto Chamber and President of Águas e Energia do Porto after visiting the factory.

The work is part of the construction of the Pink Line (São Bento – House of Music), which serves as an alternative outlet for the current Vila River, which flows under Musinho da Silveira Street, and also prevents flooding at the future São Bento station. located in Praça da Liberdade.

“We are now going to do a secondary lining, this secondary lining will last until the end of this year, then we are going to do part of the box downstream between this new river and the existing Vila,” which is expected between January and February, according to Thiago Braga.

The President of Metro do Porto also announced that between February and May, time will be devoted to the construction of a connection box upstream of the Vila River, which flows along Rua de São João, which will lead to the occupation of this road.

Asked about the connection between the new Vila river tunnel and the current one, and the potential consequences of the connection in winter, especially after the floods that occurred in January, the metro manager said that in the event of another emergency event, the tunnel dug today can now be used to drain water , even if temporarily.

“What we have built today, even though it is not fully operational, already guarantees an excellent level of adaptation and protection against situations that have occurred in the past. We are talking about a tunnel with a length of 500 meters, a final diameter of 5.30 meters and which, in very extreme situations, will always be sacrificed to the detriment of surface floods,” assured Thiago Braga.

Filipe Araújo, asked if this possibility of using it in a temporary case made him “confident”, responded that “extreme events are always events in which one can never” say that a person is “100% confident” because “the risk exists “

“I think there is a teamwork here, especially on a project of this size. When we do work, we obviously have to deal with risks and minimize them in every way possible,” added the Chamber’s vice-president from Porto.

Regarding the construction of the Pink Line, the president of Metro do Porto said that there are “very different percentages” of tunnel digging “depending on the direction of the work”, amounting to “about 70%” between Jardim do Carregal and Praça da Liberdade, but there are fronts “where this the percentage is lower” due to different terrain characteristics.

Thiago Braga also said that traffic on the Avenida de France, next to the Casa da Música, will begin to improve “in the next two weeks” and traffic will be opened “in stages.”

“This gradual change until it is put under the same conditions as the Avenida de France will also take place until the end of the year,” he said.

Construction of the line is expected to be completed in 2024 and operations will begin at the end of the first quarter of 2025, at a total cost of €304.7 million.