During the four years of the National Government led by Gustavo Petro, work will be done to recover the railway connection between Neiva and the Caribbean coast, the commitment is to carry out the pre-feasibility studies of the initiative that is just ‘gestating’.
CATHERINE MANCHOLA
Recovering the railway connection for the country is one of the ‘flag’ objectives that the National Government has and that President Gustavo Petro began to announce even during the campaign in 2022.
But in the case of Huila, the project to connect with the Caribbean coast will take more than four years and that is why the real commitment is only to carry out the pre-feasibility and feasibility studies and designs for the construction of the route that includes Neiva and the Corridor. Central Railroad (Dorada – Santa Marta).
This was clarified yesterday, Tuesday, June 6, by the technical director of the Transport sub-directorate of the Ministry of Transport, Holman David Benavides Quintero, who was presiding over an event organized by the Government of Huila about the need and promise of this project in terms of opitate competitiveness
In addition, it will seek to include Pitalito and thus connect the south of the department with the port, since it represents a great opportunity for sectors such as the coffee sector, since until the present year 2023 Huila has been leading production for 12 consecutive years and this was highlighted. during the previous day, in exports it is also the first.
“Initially it will depend on a pre-feasibility and that will give us feasibility values that will later allow us to allocate resources through each of the items that are provided within the National Development Plan (PND),” explained the Ministry of Transport official.
In January the National Government had announced its intention to create a National Railway Agency, but yesterday there was only talk that the project will be led by the Ministry.
“The Neiva – La Dorada project has some initial progress made by the Government of Huila, joint studies have been carried out, but initially it would start with a pre-feasibility, which is what is stipulated by the PND as a goal for the four-year period,” he specified. “The pre-feasibility studies will be analyzed and the award will be made, if applicable, with what results from these studies,” he added.
The ideal is to implement it in the existing corridor, but that will be determined by the resulting studies and designs. Depending on how the project is structured, it will define where the resources will come from.
One of the challenges facing the project was announced by the Governor of Huila, Luis Enrique Dussán: “in the jurisdiction of Neiva alone there are 75 processes of invasion of the public space of the railway line, so, first you have to regain control of all those invasions; and in Villavieja there are 7”. He warned that “if we do not resolve this issue, it will be impossible for us to talk about the recovery of the railway line.”
For his part, Fernando Rey Valderrama, an expert in railways, explained that the restructuring of the corridor must have international standards, for example, the width of the railway gauge (distance between the internal faces of the rails) must be modified and consequently some of the the old tunnels are no longer going to serve.
Likewise, the rails must be changed, since the current ones “will not support the weight that is required.” In addition, the topography of the aforementioned project “allows it to handle much larger radii of curvature than the existing ones” and that also allows it to reach higher speeds.
The main objective of the restructuring of the connection is to move cargo from Huila to the port, that would lower the cost of transporting the products and would be more cargo in less time.
