High speed
The Albacete - Alicante high-speed line which opened last month. Photo: Adif
Castile. While civil works to extend the Valladolid line towards Leon were completed months ago, the Spanish government is now slowing the rhythm of the project and is not expected to tender the superstructure contracts - also being let on a PPP basis - until the end of this year. North of Leon, the 25km Pajares Base Tunnel between Castile and Asturias also faces problems.
The first civil works were contracted back in 2003, and its twin tubes were finally holed through in 2009. Since then, engineers have been grappling with structural issues, including water leaking continuously at a rate of 300 litres per second towards the north portal. With more than ƒ3bn already invested, Adif has still to confirm a completion date for this mixed-traffic line, which is built for dual-gauge operation.
Meanwhile, construction has been suspended completely on the Valladolid - Burgos high-speed line, and substantially slowed down on the Basque Y, which will link Vitoria, Bilbao, and San Sebastian with the French border crossing at Irun/ Hendaye. Plans to link both lines and connect them to the Madrid - Barcelona line have been dropped. Likewise, proposals for a new line between Almeria and Murcia have also been shelved.
Finally on the Madrid - Lisbon corridor, an isolated section of new line between a remote area of central Extremadura and the Portuguese
38
border, where construction is almost complete, will open no earlier than 2015 and even then catenary will not be installed. This stretch, which has fallen victim to the abandonment of the Portuguese high-speed project, looks set to remain isolated from the rest of the high-speed network for many years. As the completion of new lines stalls, and while planners come to terms with the fact that two incompatible national rail networks will have to coexist for decades, investment in interoperable systems made over the last 10 years are at least beginning to pay off. No less than 117 of Renfe’s 246 high-speed trains are dual voltage (25kV ac/3kV dc) and are fitted with variable gauge equipment manufactured either by Talgo or CAF.
In its quest for domestic
interoperability, Renfe has even converted 15 of the multi-system trains to bi-mode (diesel/electric) configuration, capable of running at 250km/h on electrified high-speed lines and operating independently over non- electrified lines. There are currently 11 automatic gauge changing facilities situated at strategic locations around the network, and these have rendered the once-challenging break-of-gauge an operational insignificance. Dual-gauge tracks are also extending
the reach of standard-gauge rolling stock. Around Barcelona and Girona existing lines have been converted to dual-gauge operation to allow standard-gauge freight trains to access
the port of Barcelona (IRJ December 2010 p16). Adif is now planning to extend the dual-gauge corridor south along the Mediterranean coast to Tarragona and Valencia, and is also looking at the feasibility of converting other lines across the northern half of the country as a less costly option for linking isolated sections of high-speed line into the broader network. With a flamboyant and interoperable (albeit incomplete) system in place, planners are now studying how to increase high-speed traffic beyond the current 6 billion passenger-km per year. The government has announced a partial opening of the high-speed market as part of its wider programme of railway liberalisation, and Renfe will be required to lease up to 26 trains to competitors in an effort to attract new entrants. Last February, Renfe also adopted a commercial policy more focused on yield management principles and an 11% average cut in AVE fares in February has been rewarded with a 14% year-on-year increase in ridership. It has also boosted the average load factor, a development which demonstrates that there is still some room for improvement.
Sadly however lower fares or economic recovery are unlikely to create demand in sparsely-populated areas, nor will they alter the fundamental cause behind the network’s uniqueness - the uneven rate of development between corridors. IRJ
IRJ July 2013
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