The abrupt journey of railway corridors in Spain

Of the nine European runners that form the trans-European transport network (TEN-T), two of them go through Spanish territory. These are the priority transport networks, designed to facilitate the communication of people and goods throughout the European Union. They have as objective intermodality and interoperability, the coordinated development of infrastructure, improvements in cross -border sections and the elimination of bottlenecks. The Atlantic Corridor and the Mediterranean corridor are the ones that will bring a great competitive advantage to Spain.

The Atlantic Corridor is the multimodal connection that connects Portugal, Spain, France, Germany and Ireland. It is composed of the different transport modes: road, rail, port, aerial, river and multimodal. In addition to the railway and road routes, it includes ports, airports, intermodal stations and more important cities. As it passes through Spain, the Atlantic Corridor includes 11 autonomous communities (including Canary Islands), and in its railway route incorporates more than 5,300 km, according to the last expansion proposal collected by the Government Commissioner’s office for the Atlantic Corridor. The Mediterranean, meanwhile, is a multimodal corridor that crosses six countries; Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary, with 3,500 km in length that must provide multimodal link of the ports and terminals of the Mediterranean west with the center of Europe. As indicated by the Government Commissioner’s office for the Mediterranean corridor, it will connect with seven other runners, configuring a link with all European markets that will project the production and trade of the Spanish Mediterranean coast quickly and effectively.

José Manuel Vassallo, professor of the Department of Transportation Engineering, Territory and Urbanism of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), recalls that the Mediterranean and Atlantic corridors “are very necessary to improve the competitiveness of Spanish products and provide more accessibility to the most remote regions.” However, it indicates that it would be necessary that “be complemented with a central corridor that communicates Spain with Europe through Aragon.” As for the Cantabrian-Mediterranean corridor, without reducing importance, he believes that “he does not have such an important role to connect Spain with the EU.” If we look at the European level, “unfortunately all the countries of Europe are delayed in regard to the implementation of the trans -European networks,” he says.

Vassallo considers that the main problem that exists in Spain to be able to carry out all the planned plans for these corridors is that the country has been without a Transport infrastructure plan that allows to align the national interests with the connection needs that the European Union expects for Spain ». Once the corridors have been completed, there are no doubt that they would contribute “greater competitiveness and equality between the regions of Spain” both in transport and the companies and the national economy in general. In his opinion, mobility is not conceived in Europe without intermodality. “Digitization is helping a lot to promote it, but there is still a lot of work in infrastructure that facilitates the connection between modes and in the simplification of bureaucratic procedures.”

Atlantic corridor

For these runners to be 100% operations, different investments are planned. Spanish companies are still very attentive to the development of all the planned actions because they know that the competitiveness of their products is at stake. In 2023 a total of 19 cameras of the Atlantic arch, from Bordeaux to Porto, to reflect on this subject. «The concern and the great challenge concentrated that Arco Atlantic was being an increasingly peripheral area. The large centers of economic activity move. At the global level the center is in the Pacific already European level, increasingly to the east, ”explains José Ignacio Zudaire, president of the Bilbao Chamber of Commerce, which acts as a technical secretariat of the Arch Chambers Forum. «We stay in a more peripheral position and ask what we can do to change it and a key topic is connectivity. If I am connected I will have options to interact, ”he adds. Hence, to resume the position they understand that the part of the rail transport and everything related to the Atlantic corridor is of the utmost importance, “but also the logistics areas, potentiation of the ports …”.

From this forum they want to monitor all the projects of the railway corridor to try to promote them and that the planned period of 2030 is met. “We have the problem of connection of France, it does not have it among its priorities, but by 2042, but theoretically there is a European regulation that we all must comply with and think that it will be in 2030,” explains Zudaire. It highlights the relevance of this corridor for its intermodality and is clear that business competitiveness is at stake. “If you produce, but you are not able to have a logistics that takes the merchandise at good prices at the end you lose customers,” he clarifies. Likewise, passenger transport is important in many ways, such as “attracting talent because if you do innovative projects, they must be attractive with good connectivity.”

Fulfill the deadlines

From the forum they transfer to the government the problems that companies have today due to the lack of connectivity to understand the importance of fulfilling the deadlines. They emphasize that the terminals planned in the corridor, such as Júndiz, are very important because “you can make a change of merchandise through the port, pass it to other parts. Intermodality is fundamental in logistics, having those nodes where you can change a modality with another, ”explains the president of the Bilbao Chamber of Commerce. He believes that it is clear that the railway is taking a lot of weight, and even talks about the sea highways, “that a part deviates to maritime transport and another towards the train, which is a very important bet until sustainability.”

Another aspect that stands out from this forum is the impact on social and regional cohesion. “If we leave some disconnected regions the impact will be terrible, which has already passed throughout history,” says José Ignacio Zudaire. Remember that in the Basque Country Vitoria it was a great center because it had cart trafficking, but when the railroad arrived and went from Logroño to Bilbao, “Vitoria began a decline that took a long time to recover.”

The Railsider logistics and transport company operates in the two runners, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, offering railway logistics solutions door to the door to European companies for national and international traffic. In the Atlantic, the company’s commitment has been to have a great terminal in Júndiz, which goes in line with the Development said. «We are happy for how it will be developed. Today, Italian, French cars cannot arrive…. Until now we can only live with the Iberian width, ”explains Enrique Tros de Ilarduya, general director of Railsider. “Companies bet on this corridor and we have placed ourselves here,” he adds. From Júndiz, 20,000 tons of goods operate per month. Today, European merchandise arrives that performs the transford to the width wagon in Irún. When the infrastructure is ready, “that exchange will be avoided and competitiveness will be improved.”

The railway quota in Spain is very low, 4%, And the great objective of the government is to reach 10-11%in 2030. “In other countries such as Germany the situation is different, because any median company has roads, something that in Spain has been disappearing,” says the general director of Railsider Atlántico. That is why he believes that among the pending things to do is getting that “the great new companies that are believed to be provided with roads, and it is also very important to have adequate and efficient terminals,” he highlights. Tros de Ilarduya also indicates the need to bet on the digitalization of the terminals. For example, they manage to carry out the traceability of all the merchandise that comes from the point of origin.

Mediterranean

As Pablo Antolín, general director of Railsider Mediterráneo points out, the Mediterranean corridor is much more advanced, pending resolutions of certain performances, “especially the section between Castelló and Vandellós, but in two or three years we hope to have the corridor running from Algeciras.” The clients of this transport and logistics company expect several things from this corridor, such as “reducing their transit times, greater reliability and also a reduction in the cost of transportation due to an infrastructure that avoids road changes.”

However, Antolín recalls that in the price of rail transport there are many costs associated with the supply chain, such as the price of logistics soil or connectivity. In his opinion, this corridor has a lot of potential, but at the same time he can bring problems. Among them, “it may be saturated shortly after increasing the load of the railroad,” he emphasizes. On the other hand, if we want to achieve the objectives of a 10% transport of goods on rail, “the tunnel that connects Spain with France will be an important bottle tunnel.” He believes that there are different possibilities to solve these problems and that it should be taken into account how both the transport of goods and passengers evolves.