REFER

Rede Ferroviária Nacional? / I, Entidade Pública Empresarial, usually abbreviated as REFER, EPE or only REFER, is a public Portuguese company whose mission is the management and maintenance of the Portuguese rail network. REFER annually brings the Diretório da Rede out to German power report, a status report of the Portuguese rail network. REFER is the seat of the Santa Apolonia train station in Lisbon.

History and Function

In the course of segregation of duties and distribution of Portuguese public railway company Caminhos -de- ferro Portugueses in the 1990s, the government established under Prime Minister Guterres in April 1997 with the Legislative Decree 104/97, which on 29 April 1997 in the Diário da República, the Journal of Laws was the Portuguese government announced that public company under the name Rede Ferroviária Nacional to German National Railway network. The public company is under administration of the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Communications or the subordinate traffic Secretary of State and the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration, or the child of State for Finance.

The tasks of the REFER include mainly the management, construction and maintenance of the current Portuguese railway network. It is thus one of the three basic pillars of the reform of the railway area. In addition to the REFER these are still the National Institute for Mobility and Land Transport in Portuguese Instituto da mobilidade e dos Transportes Terrestres that granted inter alia, access to the rail network, the licenses for railway operator assigns, collects the fees for the network and, in general, the activities in the Portuguese railway network monitors. The third pillar of the reform is the renamed national railway company Comboios de Portugal, which now only the Portuguese passenger and freight traffic operates. Thus, the Portuguese government opened the railway network to other railway undertakings.

In general, the financial position of the company is considered critical. REFER recorded in 2007, a loss of 162 million euros, 181 million euros in 2008. On the other hand, the Infrastruktubetreiber took a more in network charges. The State Transport Company Comboios de Portugal on the REFER had 54.8 million euros, the private operator FERTAGUS 3.102 million euros. Average use more than 2100 trains per day, the net REFER, more than 80 percent of which are passenger trains. Overall, the debt of the public transport infrastructure company now amount to more than five billion euros.

2009, the Portuguese government changed the corporate status of the REFER from the previous Empresa Pública ( "public companies " ) to a Pública Empresarial Entidade ( roughly comparable to an institution under public law ).

Since the beginning of 2014 there are plans by the Portuguese government to merge the company with the also state road operators Estrada de Portugal. This is intended on the one hand provide operating cost savings of more than 15 million euros. On the other hand, should the funsionierte, get more business loans with lower interest rates in order to finance future infrastructure projects can ..

Chairman of the REFER

Network and operations

Route network

REFER operates a railway network with a total length of 2546.9 miles, ranging from Valença in the north to Lagos and Vila Real de Santo António in the south of the country. Of these, 2438.8 km in Iberian broad gauge, 108.1 km meter gauge. 1823.58 km of the network are single track, double track 562.6 km and 47.7 km on multiple fronts. 1608.3 km are electrified with 25 kV, 50 Hz, 25.4 km with 1500 V (excluding the Linha de Cascais ), the rest ( 913.2 km ) is traversed with diesel railcars and diesel locomotives.

Border crossings

There are three still operative border crossings to Spain: Valença / Tui in the north of the country between Porto and Vigo ( Linha do Minho ), Vilar Formoso / Fuentes de Oñoro in the northeast between Guarda and Salamanca ( Linha da Beira Alta ) and Elvas / Badajoz ( Linha do Leste ) in the southeast. About the former regards travel drive over Valença just some Regionalzugpaare, on Fuentes de Oñoro just a night train pair, there are over Elvas is currently no train traffic. The border crossing between Abrantes and Cáceres ( Ramal de Cáceres ) has been set.

In the south, no cross-border link exists to Spain, where the distance between Vila Real de Santo António and Huelva must be traveled by bus to get ahead in the direction of Seville, a few years ago there was only one ferry.

Railway transport companies

In the network of REFER are currently operating three railway companies: the state Comboios de Portugal ( as a holding company with its subsidiaries CP Urbano de Lisboa, CP Urbanos' do Porto, CP Regional, CP Longo Curso and CP Carga ) and the private FERTAGUS and Takargo.

Future

The financial situation is tense Refer the chronic. As part of the European financial crisis and the budget crisis of the Portuguese State numerous expansion and modernization projects of the rail network have come to a standstill.

Nevertheless, there are in-house priorities for the modernization and expansion of the rail network. These include a freight line between Sines and the Spanish border town of Badajoz, already completed at the turn, connect to the Spanish section of the high-speed line Madrid - Lisbon. The construction work will be carried out to 2017-2019, the cost would amount to about one billion euros. Other projects include the modernization of the railway lines Linha do Norte ( 400 million euro construction costs), Linha da Beira Alta ( 900 million euros ), Linha do Minho ( 145 million euros ) and the Linha de Cascais ( 160 million euros ). By 2015, the Linha do Douro to be electrified between Caíde and Marco de Canaveses.