A year has passed, last April 1st, since the cuts in the price of public transport passes, right in the phase when most of the population was in lockdown due to the measures to prevent and combat the epidemic. It was, as the PCP stressed at the time, a step of enormous significance for an important part of the population. Important for those who live and work in large metropolitan areas, due to the vast scope of the measure and of the significant reduction in mobility costs. Important for those living in the rest of the country, where price cuts have also taken place, but above all because the need to build a public transport offer throughout the national territory, which does not exist, had been placed on the agenda.

Important for the country because, after many years of policies contrary to the development of public transport, of privatisations, cuts and suppression of offer, price increases, it was possible to adopt a measure in an opposite sense and of enormous reach, be it from a social point of view with the improvement of the living conditions of the populations, or from an economic point of view, reducing imports of fuel and vehicles and contributing to the territorial balance, or from the environmental point of view, reducing emissions and noise and the consumption of raw materials. This measure has, as we have always insisted on stressing, the mark of the PCP and of the struggle that the populations have been waging. The mark of the communists' proposals in the Assembly of the Republic and in the State Budgets that gave expression to it, the mark of the CDU local governments that were particularly committed to the implementation of this measure and dragging others with it, the mark of years and years of struggle, of denunciation and combat, clarification and mobilisation for the achievement of a right that was confirmed on April 1st. 2019.

But such an important and necessary advance only paved the way for a long path that the country needs to cover in terms of public transport. The epidemic outbreak requires specific measures of response in the current phase, but it cannot erase, nor waive, the need to continue to deepen a demanding course in public transport.

For the immediate moment we have placed the need for a complete replacement of the supply that was assured before the epidemic outbreak. The desired restoration of economic activity and social life cannot be guaranteed if the right to transport is not ensured. The reports that reach us, however, reveal problems that are not having the necessary response, even leading to situations of overcrowding of carriages, boats and buses, when what the health authorities recommend is precisely the opposite. For the PCP, it is necessary to ensure an offer that guarantees that the sanitary distancing rules are complied with, limiting the capacity, but expanding the offer and ensuring its regular hygiene. It cannot happen as we have seen, the authorities intervening to fine users because they do not wear a mask and at the same time allowing crowded trains or buses to circulate as we have seen in recent weeks.

In this process, it is also clear that, in order to guarantee an adequate and safe response for the populations, the country cannot be dependent on private operators, namely on economic groups operating in the road transport sector. The repeated blackmail with which they demand more and more public resources to guarantee the offer of transport - even taking advantage of the situation created by Covid 19 - is revealing that the country cannot be, nor be subject to, nor dependent on this type of pressure and blackmail. In this context, there is still the problem resulting from the loss of revenues by public transport companies such as CP Railways, but also by municipalities whose commitments in the partial funding of the tariff cuts were based on an estimate of revenues that was not reached in recent weeks due to well-known reasons. It is necessary to respond with funds from the State Budget to compensate for the drop in revenues, preventing from deepening both the debt of public companies and the financial strangling of municipalities. For the PCP, the tariff cuts that were achieved was not an isolated episode, but a fundamental and strategic option that needs to be enhanced and that cannot be called into question under the pretext of the epidemic outbreak.

Yes. The wager on collective public transport needs to be structural and requires levels of investment, economic planning and operational management capable of imposing a qualitative leap on this matter in Portugal. First of all, by expanding the network, reversing the path that led to the closure of hundreds of kilometres of railroad, depriving large sections of the national territory of this structuring means of transport, but also in the expansion of the offer starting with the offer on the railways. In Portugal, for more than 20 years, not a single train was purchased and the investment that is currently foreseen leaves out the rolling stock, both for intercity service and for the long haul. We know that behind the scenes of this decision, it is not just budgetary issues, but the undeclared intention of handing these services to private economic groups within the framework of liberalisation of railway transport promoted by the European Union, in a context of weakening the CP. For the PCP, CP must be assumed as a large and only railway operator at the national level, involving both the operation and the network, which requires the integration of REFER in CP, enhancing an integrated management of the most structuring mode of transport for the future.

In the road transport sector, the need to rebuild a national public operator capable of ensuring a large-scale response to the entire territory emerges with great clarity, freeing both the government and the municipalities from blackmail and pressure from private groups, ensuring a significant increase in offer, capable of bringing the benefits of tariff cuts to the entire national territory, attracting thousands of people to public transport and who are now driven either to individual transport or to isolation.

We do not ignore the voices that are heard and that seek to anticipate and make “inevitable” a return to the times of the SGP and the Troika Pact of Aggression, transferring the impacts of preventive measures and combating the outbreak to the workers and the Portuguese People. But what this situation has revealed is precisely the need to ensure another policy. As revealed by the National Health Service, the public transport service also needs to be strengthened, in its public companies and in its investment. The production in Portugal of rolling stock that already existed before must be resumed at a time when many have discovered the importance of industrialisation. The expansion of the transport offer in a large part of the national territory needs to be taken on as a priority and as a central feature for a more balanced, cohesive and harmonious territory. The price cuts must be continued, aiming at free public transport, significantly reducing the use of individual transport, perhaps the most structurally important measure for the coming years. The rights and wages of workers in transport companies need to be valued and more workers need to be hired, thus also responding to the demands that will be placed on employment.

These are some of the issues for a debate on a theme that affects the lives of millions of Portuguese, workers, students, retirees and pensioners and which is strategic for the development of the country. We will not be far from the truth if we say that wagering on public transport can be an important part of the economic and social response that will be required in our country in the near future.