Da demanda reprimida à capacidade efetiva: proposta de política pública de fomento à ativação de corredores ferroviários subutilizados

Abstract

The National Logistics Plan 2050 (PNL 2050) identifies 44.16 million tonnes of annual export cargo transported by road along flows associated with underutilized rail alternatives. This figure reveals a significant area for investigation, part of which may offer potential for modal shift, subject to verification of cargo capture potential, capacity, and additionality. This article proposes a mechanism for structuring public interventions to convert potential demand into incremental rail freight, focusing on existing or underutilized corridors. The methodology simplifies decision-making into three filters: the existence of capturable cargo; identification of end-to-end capacity bottlenecks; and demonstration of public additionality. For each eligible flow, a scenario without additional intervention is compared with alternatives involving the optimization of existing infrastructure and operations and, only when necessary, physical expansion. Corridor capacity is treated as the lowest capacity among its components (origin, terminal, railway line, transshipment, port access, or destination), thereby avoiding investments that merely shift the bottleneck elsewhere. The exploratory application to the Southern Network, the FNS–EFC integration, and the Paulista Network–Santos illustrates three intervention hypotheses to be assessed: optimization and rehabilitation before expansion; resolution of access constraints before adding new physical capacity; and evaluation of the entire corridor before making localized investments. The proposal is complemented by interinstitutional governance, a funding gap test, and indicators focused on capacity, incremental freight volumes, and public cost per outcome. The original contribution lies in connecting the PNL 2050's diagnosis of suppressed demand to a comparative and verifiable decision-making framework for determining where public intervention can effectively change the logistics modal split.