It's time to talk about trains, Lula!

These hundred days flew by. The government's overall assessment is positive. In the area of ​​social programs, the news is extraordinary, with the significant increase in Bolsa Família (family allowance program), improvements in school meals, expansion of the gas voucher program, and an increase in the minimum wage.

The fiscal framework, in turn, generated praise from both the left and the right, and was criticized only by the extremes: the far left considered it conservative and neoliberal, while the ultraliberals described it as excessively statist.

Development economists filled numerous positions in the Ministries of Finance and Industry and Commerce, a number not seen for a long time. Apparently, the Lula government intends to adopt bold actions aimed at increasing the complexity of the Brazilian economy. In other words, there will be a renewed effort at reindustrialization, either by modernizing our current infrastructure or by investing in the creation of new industries.

However, the Lula government is still floundering on an absolutely strategic issue: transportation.

Brazil has been mired for decades in an obsolete, expensive, inefficient, highly polluting, and hopeless transportation infrastructure.

Large cities are on the verge of becoming dysfunctional, with monstrous traffic jams occurring daily. Bus stations and airports face systematic problems of overcrowding.

The connection between Brazilian capitals is precarious. It takes six hours to go from Rio to São Paulo, or much longer depending on traffic, even though it's a distance a bullet train could cover in less than an hour, while still offering all the comforts to passengers.

It's time to seriously consider a major national transportation project that prioritizes rail transport.

In the coming days, the Workers' Party member will meet with the President of China, Xi Jinping, and will have a historic opportunity.

This entire final stage of Chinese modernization, accelerated over the last thirty years, has been underpinned by the expansion of the country's railway network. The Chinese government invested in high-speed trains to connect major Chinese cities. And within the cities, immense subway and surface rail networks were built in record time.

The Brazilian government may forge partnerships with China to bring trains to Brazil, including technology transfer, so that we can become self-sufficient and reduce the costs of maintaining and building new lines.

It will be a huge challenge, because no large railway project will succeed if the state apparatus, including the judiciary, does not work in harmony to carry out the necessary expropriations for the construction of the lines.

In the press conference with Lula that I attended, the president spoke at length about the crisis in the automotive sector. He didn't mention trains for a moment. This is worrying. The national infrastructure is overloaded. Sometimes you can't even walk properly in the cities because parked cars occupy the sidewalks.

This is a point where the most serious disconnect between the political class and the majority of the population becomes apparent.

The political class only uses cars to go to the airport. Therefore, they don't see the transportation problem as something desperately necessary and urgent.

Is it expensive to build trains? Will it take many years?

Yes, it's expensive, but how much are we spending in wasted hours and liters of gasoline, in environmental pollution, with these epic, daily, unbearable traffic jams that consume years of workers' lives?

Regarding cargo, the superiority of rail transport is obvious. It will be much safer, faster, and cheaper to transport our products from the interior to the port, and from the port to the interior, via rail!

Precisely because it will be a lengthy transformation, it is important to start now. The complete education of a human being, from preschool to higher education, takes more than twenty years.

I therefore do not believe that a twenty- or thirty-year project to change the entire logistics of passenger and freight transport in the country, through the implementation of high-speed trains connecting all Brazilian capitals, is a very long time.

Let's talk about trains, Lula!