National report Spain – June 2010

Positive points for public transport in your country:

It seems that despite the serious economical and financial Spanish crisis, the figures of public transport users have not worsened in the first month of 2010.

The Spanish financial crisis will moderate the rhythm of building new infrastructures. This is a good new since it will allow Spain to entry in a way of rationalising its decisions. The building of infrastructures had become a kind of new Spanish sport, due to reasons of prestige, without any relationship with the service that should provide. The crisis gives also more opportunities to those infrastructures more related to the daily user of, for example, commuters that normally they are out of the political agenda.

The level of current investment in public transport infrastructures in Barcelona is still very high. It is foreseen that after summer there will be an avalanche of inaugurations (Catalan elections in November obliges)

The municipality of Barcelona has announced a plan to introduce in the coming year a new bus scheme based on metro criteria. On 11 new lines a service with high frequency and speed will be introduced. This scheme should lead to a new and more rational bus scheme in the city.

Negative points for public transport in your country:

As it was reported some weeks ago, the horrible results of the referendum in Barcelona, on the refurbishment of the Diagonal Avenue, have lead to the defenders of the sustainable mobility to a slight depressed situation.

The serious snowfall that Barcelona suffered on March shows the high level of vulnerability of Catalan public transport. More than 50 trees fell on the tracks preventing people from the possibility to come back at home that evening. More than one thousand people had to overnight in sport facilities.

Again, as it happened two years ago with the public works for building the new HSL in the south of Barcelona (direction Madrid), the construction of the new HSL section between Barcelona and Girona (direction France) caused systematic serious delays in suburban and regional rail service between Barcelona and the north of Catalonia. But the good new is that so far any interruption of the service for a long period of time has been reported.