National report Spain – October 2011

Negative points for public transport in your country:

Portugal’s note: the Portuguese government announced the willing to close four hundred km of rial lines. According with these sources, the decisions has been taken in the frame of a rationalization process included in the Transportation Strategic Plan, as foreseen in the agreement reached by the previous government with the EU troika.

New trams have serious problems in the south of Spain. The tram of Vélez-Málaga was closed and reopened after some weeks due to financial problems and the Jaen’s tram did not start its service, event though the works have ended, due to financial problems as well. Granada and Málaga trams are suffering delays in their opening due that some of their sections are under the surface in order “not to bother cars”. Some of the local leaders declared that their cities do not want trams but metros. The Spanish financial crisis is putting things in their right position.  Moreover, the trams of Parla, near Madrid, was closed during 2 weeks due to disagreements between different institutions. After that the Parla’s Mayor had started a kind of hunger strike the problem was solved.

PT tariffs in Barcelona suffered a high increase due to the financial crisis. The PTP approach about creating an environmental pass, following the German schemes, was not accepted but the authorities promised to study the possibility to be introduced next year

Some of the airports that were built in Spain during the infrastructures boom period have failed. A report issued in TV said that the number of Spanish airports doubles that one of Germany.

The construction of the new automatic metro line in Barcelona has been suspended due to the financial crisis and the extremely high costs that were not foreseen.

The Spanish government approved the idea to build three new rail corridors, mainly devoted to freight (Mediterranean, Central and Cantabric corridors) with a budget of 55.000 Mio€ following the typical Spanish approach to put on the table the biggest infrastructures to be built instead of studying how to manage the rail tracks which have no service after the opening of the new HSL’s.