Rail Transportation in Spain

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Madrid–Barcelona, however, is the current jewel of the system. Like the Madrid–Seville line, the new train to Barcelona features an entirely new route, new tracks, and new trains—these equipped with swiveling seats and full video and audio capability. And like the country’s first high-speed line, this one dramatically slashes travel time. A trip that once took more than six hours now takes just over two and a half. The new trains offer a smooth, swift ride at about 185 miles per hour, or 300 kilometers per hour. When new signaling systems are installed (they’re expected for fall 2008), train speeds will be able to reach 220 miles per hour, or 350 kilometers per hour, and travel time will shrink to about two hours.

By 2010 Spain will have the most high-speed tracks in the world, and plans call for 10,000 kilometers by 2020. This would place 90 percent of the population within 30 miles of a highspeed station.

Experts in the field cite two and a half hours as a time at which rail is competitive with air travel. The line to Barcelona, at close to 400 miles, now competes with one of the most trafficked air routes in the world: five million passengers are expected to use it in 2008 alone. A rail line from San Francisco to Los Angeles would be shorter, at 347 miles. And Boston is only 50 miles farther by road from Washington, DC, than Madrid is from Barcelona, meaning it would be theoretically possible–politics, land-use planning, and finances allowing–to build a train that could connect those U.S. cities in about three hours.

The Madrid–Barcelona line also represents the beginning of a new planned link to France. T.P. Ferro, a company created by a coalition of the Spanish and French construction companies ACS Dragados and Eiffage, has already broken ground on a new tunnel underneath the Pyrenees, the mountains that separate the two countries. The tunnel will eventually cut two hours from the trip between Barcelona and Toulouse, and travel time from Barcelona to Paris will be reduced to four and a half hours.

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