Transport and environment | Chile bets on the train

Largely abandoned under the dictatorship, the Chilean rail network is the subject of a CAN 14 billion recovery plan. Despite the great distances and the relatively low population density — as in Canada — Chile relies on the train to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and traffic congestion.

Correspondent

TEXT: Jean-Thomas Léveillé
The Press

Correspondent

PHOTOS: Sarah Mongeau-Birkett
The Press

(Chimbarongo, Chile) Taken over by vegetation and graffiti, its doors and windows missing, the small station of Chimbarongo has not welcomed a train for several decades.

Like so many others in Chile, this resort located some 150 kilometers from the capital, Santiago, was abandoned, much to the chagrin of the company that now owns the neighboring vineyard, whose wines are exported all over the world. .

“We’ve been thinking about using it since our very beginnings”, confides to The Press Soledad Meneses Pastén, head of communications and wine tourism of Cono Sur, who vinifies in Chimbarongo the grapes from the ten wineries she owns in Chile.

Chimbarongo wine has already traveled by train, before Cono Sur bought the 300-hectare estate in 1996, she points out, pointing to the gate in the vineyard fence, which gave direct access to the station. , at a certain time.

The return of the train would also be “a huge improvement for the whole community”, estimates M^me Meneses Pastén, which evokes people having to travel to other cities for different services, students traveling to the capital and tourists coming to visit the region.

This day could come, since the train begins its return with the National Railway Development Plan of the Chilean government, which provides for investments equivalent to 14 billion Canadian dollars, of which a third concerns projects already launched.

“We’re not just expanding the network, bringing it back to what it was before; we also improve the service, we increase the frequency, we buy new trains and we reuse the old ones to test new services where there is no service at all”, explains the Minister of Transport and Telecommunications of Chile , Juan Carlos Muñoz Abogabir, that The Press met in Santiago.

Triple the passengers, double the goods

The Chilean government aims to increase the number of passengers traveling by train from 51 million in 2019 (before the pandemic) to 150 million per year by 2030, and plans to increase the quantity of goods transported from 11 million to 22 million tonnes. annually on the rails.

Interestingly, unlike Canada, most of the Chilean rail network is owned by the public passenger transport company EFE (for Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado, literally “State Railway Company”), that private companies transporting goods pay to borrow.

About half of the new passengers will come from the improvement of commuter train services, provided by EFE, explains Minister Muñoz.

The rest of the efforts will be invested between Valparaíso and Puerto Montt, a corridor of some 1,100 km where 86% of the Chilean population is concentrated, the same distance as the Quebec City-Windsor corridor, where approximately 57% of the Canadian population lives.

A new railway bridge is under construction in Concepción, dismantled rails are being reinstalled here and there, others – still present – ​​are being repaired, lists the minister, citing some of the 140 projects of his train recovery plan.

Compete with the plane

In a country as large as Chile, the train faces strong competition from the plane, especially since the low-cost offer abounds, recognizes the minister Juan Carlos Muñoz Abogabir.

This is why his plan focuses first on the development of rail links of less than 500 km, for which “the train is a formidable competitor to the plane”, he says.

“Once you have that, you can dream of longer journeys”, which he does himself, referring to possible night trains with sleeping berths, which would make it possible to connect the capital to distant cities, avoiding very early departures or overnight stays at the hotel imposed by the plane.

The investment is worth it, believes the minister, for whom the train – which is largely electric, in Chile – is essential to achieve carbon neutrality, but also to reduce congestion and road accidents.

This is why his government has made it “one of the six pillars” of his mandate, which began at the end of last year with the election of left-wing president Gabriel Boric.

But the development of the train is a “State decision” which goes beyond the color of the party in power, insists Minister Muñoz, who wants to avoid making it a divisive subject, speaking of a “national effort”.

“We did not undo the previous government’s plan,” said the minister. It’s a relay race. »

The train, victim of the dictatorship

Built from 1851, the Chilean railway network connected at its peak Puerto Montt to Iquique, over some 2800 km, not counting the many secondary branches. Today, the network only has a total of 2200 km. “At the end of the 1970s, under the dictatorship [d’Augusto Pinochet], the economic approach was very oriented towards a philosophy of private enterprise that the rails should generate revenue for the State”, which led to the abandonment of several links, recalls the Minister of Transport and Telecommunications of the Chile, Juan Carlos Muñoz Abogabir. At the end of the 1980s, the relevance of keeping a public railway company was even questioned, he adds.

This report was produced with the financial support of the Fonds québécois en journalisme international. The Press has offset the greenhouse gas emissions of air travel made as part of this report by purchasing offset credits.