LISBON, Feb. 13 (Xinhua) -- Portugal's "Railroad 2020" project is facing major delays, the Publico newspaper revealed on Tuesday.
Four of the 10 projects, worth 165 million euros, should be finished by now. In fact work on only two has even begun.
The "Investment Plan for Infrastructure -- Railroad 2020" project was announced by the government in February 2016.
The scheme planned to revamp 1,193 km of railroad all over the country, including flagship north and south "international corridors".
By now, 528 km of railroad should have been built, modernized or be under construction. But only 79 km of track has even been touched.
A 43 km stretch between Nine and Viana do Castelo, near the Spanish border in the north, is being upgraded as planned.
But three other sections have seen modernizing plans scaled back and the track is merely undergoing heavy maintenance work.
Elsewhere, work has yet to even begin for a variety of reasons: in the northern Douro region, problems with planning saw the contractor stripped of the commission; in the center-north, a new line between Aveiro and Mangualde was blocked by the European Union for being financially unviable; in the Evora region, south-east of Lisbon, the local population objected to the proposed new route.
A government spokesman told the newspaper that most of the hold-ups were due to delays in planning assessments and environmental impact studies. New works timetables have yet to be set.
