New airport. Francisco Calheiros criticizes the growing number of options

The Tourism Confederation of Portugal (CTP) defended today that the more hypotheses are put forward for the construction of the new Lisbon airport, the more difficult the work of the technical commission will be and the longer the decision will take.

“We started with five hypotheses and we have already added two more. The more we put in, the more the decision will be complicated, the more difficult it will be because all the hypotheses will have to be studied […]. We fear that the more hypotheses arise, the more difficult the work of the independent technical commission will be and the more we can delay this process,” said CTP President Francisco Calheiros.

Beja and Alverca entered the list of possible locations for the new Lisbon airport, after proposals to the Independent Technical Commission (CTI) in charge of Strategic Environmental Assessment, which will analyze them, advanced in Lusa, on January 28, one of the CTI coordinators.

“We are going to analyze other options which, in the meantime, have also reached us in the form of proposals […] and the resolution of the Council of Ministers provided for this, that we have decided which other proposals we will analyze and, therefore, we we will also analyze, at least more of Alverca and more of Beja, which have already come down to us,” he said at the time, in an interview with Lusa, Professor Rosário Macário, a member of the CTI.

The head of the CTP, who was speaking to journalists today in Lisbon, on the sidelines of the inauguration of a digital counter with the value lost due to the non-decision of a new airport, stressed that the CTP asked for a decision for a long time, anyway, since the country cannot take "50 years to decide on a new airport", which he considered a pity.

Francisco Calheiros said he hoped few other alternatives would arise, pointing to March as the month in which it will be possible to have a first decision.

“Let's hope there aren't many alternatives left, otherwise, in a moment, we'll go from five to seven, from seven to 20 and I don't know where we'll end up […]. We are sure that by the end of the year we will have a decision,” he concluded.

The CTI, of which the Confederation of Tourism is a member, has Professor Rosário Partidário as general coordinator and has a team of six technical coordinators, including university professor Rosário Macário, a specialist in transport planning and operation , which was responsible for coordinating the planning area of ​​the airport. .

Created at the end of last year, the CTI, installed at the National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC), in Lisbon, is currently listening to "all the relevant entities on the subject", to arrive at a set of criteria that "will be used to analyze the different hypotheses", explained Rosário Macário.

Reports containing the CTI's findings must be closed until November, after which they move to the public discussion phase.