Railway transport infrastructure off the tracks: structural lag, challenges and new models

Abstract

This article analyzes the structural lag in Brazil’s railway transport infrastructure, highlighting how successive political-institutional choices, associated with an economic model historically oriented toward commodity exports, contributed to the institutional and logistical lock-in of the transport matrix around a road-centered axis. In this context, it critically examines the limitations of the Brazilian model of partnerships with the private sector, especially in privatization processes that, although aimed at attracting investment, proved insufficient to promote the coordinated and integrated expansion of the railway network. The expression “off the rails” is used to indicate the absence of a stable railway policy, the discontinuity of public strategies, the loss of prominence of railways in the national transport matrix, and persistent structural problems, such as the lack of standardization of track gauges. These elements are essential to understanding the structural challenges faced by the new legal-administrative models designed to expand the sector. Based on this diagnosis, the article evaluates the innovations introduced by the legal framework for railway transport, especially Law No. 14,273/2021, regulated by Decree No. 11,245/2022, from the perspective of their capacity to promote the integration, modernization, and development of railway transport in Brazil.