Rail plan to link Oeiras with Sintra to cost €100 million

A public transport project to link Cascais and Oeiras by rail will cost an estimated €100 million.

The project is to be handed to the Ministry of Infrastructures on February 28 according to the Oeiras Municipal Council councillor for Mobility, Joana Baptista who held a press conference on Thursday.

The idea is that government should give the go-ahead as soon as possible so that the project can be completed in 2028 in time to be eligible for European 2030 funds, according to the councillor, who added that Oeiras is currently the district in Portugal with the second largest portfolio of projects after Lisbon.

The project linking the two towns is known as the Automatic Urban Transport System or SATU in Portuguese.

The project had been on the table for two decades but had been put on ice. It was intended to be a monorail system, but now will be a conventional railway track model.

The new rolling stock will be similar to electric light rail systems with a station at Oeiras Parque stopping off at the three main business parks in the borough. It will not, however, stop right in the town of Sintra because agreement could not be reached given the town’s UNESCO status.

It is expected that two-thirds of its users will come from the borough of Sintra. (35,000 users per day).

The high number of passengers is down to Oeiras receiving around 30,000 people daily who work at the various business parks in the borough.

It joins another project called LIOS that will link the western area of the borough of Oeiras with stops at Miraflores, Carnaxide, Algés, and terminating at Dafundo.

“If we want people to change people’s travel habits and use public transport then we have to provide the infrastructure because there is no (rail) transport in between to offer them”, said the President of urban centres parking management entity Parques Tejo, Rui Rei.