Northern Portugal and Galicia call for urgent investment in ‘outdated’ Celta train

Regional leaders in northern Portugal and Galicia called on Tuesday for urgent investment in the “outdated” Celta international train that connects Porto with Vigo, saying a future high-speed project was no excuse for not investing in the present.

“We remember that the current connection, the so-called ‘Celta’ train, between Porto and Vigo, takes two and a half hours, uses very outdated materials and offers service conditions that urgently need to be updated while the Atlantic axis is being connected [por alta velocidade] “It cannot materialize to make such a trip possible within a maximum of one hour,” can be read in a joint statement signed today in Valença between the Junta da Galiza and the Northern Regional Commission for Coordination and Development (CCDR-N).

The leaders of Galicia and northern Portugal signed a joint declaration on Tuesday defending a firm commitment to launch the high-speed train by 2032, “without excuses” for delays from central governments.

Although CCDR-N president António Cunha is already eyeing the high-speed train, he believes that “Celta is present, but it is the present that will also be the future” and “in the next eight years there will be a connection between Porto and Galicia. This is with Celta, and it will be with Celta, and it is important that the connection is much better than it is today.”

In his speech after signing the declaration, the regional leader spoke of the current train as a “museological element, but it is not even beautiful, it works poorly, it works infrequently and it does not serve the Galicia-Northern Portugal Euroregion”.

Asked about continuing to use diesel trains on the already fully electrified line, António Cunha said that this circumstance “is not reasonable, given the investment made in electrifying the line.”

“First of all, it is a train that is inconvenient, slow, but at the same time its offer is very small, the available schedules are very limited,” he emphasized.

For António Cunha, “investing in Celta is important because the economic metabolism of the Euroregion has grown and cross-border tourism has also grown significantly, especially in the context of the Camino de Santiago.”

The President of the Junta of Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, stressed that “the appearance of the Celtic train in these conditions by 2032 is unacceptable.”

“Because this speed is so low for the current rail service, with trains that can be improved, with not the best combinations and frequencies, I believe this problem can be solved with much less effort,” he said.

According to Alfonso Rueda, “it would be an unacceptable argument to say that since a large infrastructure will be developed [de alta velocidade] It is not worth investing money in the Celta train for eight years.

“I am sure that if a little economic effort were made, the profitability would be very high and the number of passengers travelling within the Euroregion on trains and Celta trains would increase significantly,” he said.

Alfonso Rueda recalled that “governments [centrais] who should make these decisions”, and admitted that the issue of cross-border connections had not been taken very seriously until now.

“We have to put pressure on and say that we have to make a big final push now, without any excuses,” he stressed.

On Tuesday, António Cunha also said that in the future, when high-speed rail links are established between Porto and Vigo with stations at Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, Braga, Ponte de Lima and Valença, it will be necessary to “continue to have rail links along the coastal axis, via Viana do Castelo, to Valença via another route,” as is currently the case with Celta.

“This connection is not redundant and will not be discontinued once the high-speed line is operational, which we hope will happen in 2032,” stressed António Cunha.