Spain’s much-lauded high-speed rail network is based on a hub-and-spoke model with Madrid, the Spanish capital, at its very centre. This works very well for travel along high-speed lines to and from Madrid, but not between the country’s second- and third-largest cities of Barcelona and Valencia respectively, which are separated by only 350 km and yet are not connected by high-speed rail. The Euromed intercity train connecting these two regional capitals takes 3.5 to 4 hours, and is expensive and infrequent, dissuading many from using it. Compare that with the 2.5 hours it takes to travel almost twice that distance between Barcelona and Madrid.
The result: many decide instead to drive between Barcelona and Valencia. It costs less money than taking the train, and takes the same amount of time (as long as the highway is not traffic-laden, which is rare). There is no freight rail service to speak of between these two major Mediterranean port cities, so the AP-7 highway tends to be clogged with tractor trailers, making driving very frustrating and dangerous. The other day Google Maps advised me that there were 4 accidents on the AP-7 between Barcelona and Valencia, with traffic severely backed up. Something is not right.
All this is the fault of politics. The “centralization” of Madrid dates back to its very beginnings, when it was rather arbitrarily made the capital of Spain in 1561 because of its geographical situation smack dab in the middle of the country. (By that token, Canada’s capital would be Baker Lake, Nunavut, while the capital of the USA would be Belle Fourche, South Dakota). As a matter of policy, everything must pass through Madrid. This is where “kilometer 0” is located, and it is why the freshest seafood in all of Spain is enjoyed in Madrid, more than 300 km from the nearest seashore. Make sense? Welcome to Spain.
Now, in a rare loosening up of Spanish centralism, the central government in Madrid is allowing Barcelona airport to expand so that it can handle more international flights, a completely wrong-headed idea, as I have argued elsewhere in this blog. While loosening up Spain’s ultra-centralism is good, shouldn’t it be its highly centralized high-speed rail network that gets loosened up first?
Establishing long-overdue high-speed rail between Barcelona and Valencia should be top priority. There has been much talk but no action about this. A new high-speed rail track would free up the existing train tracks for freight trains to take traffic pressure off the AP-7 highway to hell. The seed of a “Mediterranean Corridor” would then be planted that, in the future, could be extended all the way to Cadiz on Spain’s southwestern Atlantic coast. With the exception of Madrid, Spain’s population is mostly concentrated along its coastlines, especially the Mediterranean, so this would finally start to make some sense. Hey, tourists could even use it!
Criticalista 