Levante businessmen claim before the EU that the Mediterranean axis of merchandise and charge against the planned investments in the Atlantic Corridor that connects the Northwest with the rail network of the rest of the peninsula and of Europe because, according to they allege, there is not enough traffic to guarantee performance. The Ferrmed association, a business lobby that presses to promote the Mediterranean connection, defends that “we must invest where the traffic is”. Its president, Joan Amorós, went to Brussels last Tuesday to present a study on the optimization of rail traffic which excludes the modernization of the freight train to Galicia, Asturias and Castilla y León.
In your opinion, the European Union should focus on the 18,000 kilometers –of the total of 70,000 of the main railway network– which concentrate 65 percent of the freight traffic. Amorós criticized that the Government invests “in a disjointed way.” “Spain has added a series of lines that go to Galicia and Asturias. It’s all very well, but in the end they don’t have enough traffic to justify the environmental goals. You have to invest where the traffic is,” he explained.
“This does not mean that we do not have to invest where the traffic is, but You have to have priorities, added the president of Ferrmed, a very active business lobby that includes business associations, port authorities and chambers of commerce in the Mediterranean and that has been pressing the Government for some time to make the Mediterranean Corridor a priority. Now it is also bringing its demands to Brussels, at a key moment in which European funding for these projects is at stake.
“Spain has added a series of lines that go to Galicia and Asturias. It’s very good, but you have to invest where the traffic is”
The Mediterranean’s criticism of the Atlantic Freight Corridor reminds the campaign against AVE Galician from Catalonia, which questioned investing in this infrastructure due to the low passenger traffic that was being considered. Now, with high speed already in operation in Galicia, rail traffic on this line has almost doubled in the first seven months of the year. In fact, this connection was the one that experienced the greatest increase in all of Spain.
outdated infrastructure
The Atlantic Freight Corridor is a key infrastructure to guarantee the competitiveness of Galician companies as it will allow the ports to be connected and merchandise to be sent by train to Spain and the rest of Europe.
Until now Freight traffic by train is almost marginal in Galicia. It barely represents 5% of everything that moves to or from the community. But the reason is none other than obsolete infrastructures designed and built in the 19th century.
Galicia, Asturias and Castilla y León lobbied to include the Atlantic Corridor in the basic transport network of the EU, which gives it preferential access to European financing. They did it in 2018. However, for now the progress of the works is rather modestespecially when compared to the Mediterranean Corridor.
Of the 532 million expected to invest in the Galician network until 2025, for now Only 98 have been tendered, 18% of the total.
While the Mediterranean Corridor advances “at cruising speed”, in the words of the Secretary of State for Transport, Isabel Pardo de Vera, who went to Valencia last week to start the tests of the train between Xátiva and the La Encina junction. The investment figures in this axis are bulky: 4,000 million euros have already been mobilized. In the first nine months of the year alone, contracts for more than 1,500 million euros were put out to tender, 900 million were awarded and actions were carried out for 450 million euros.
Parity
Pardo de Vera defended, however, last week in Santiago that there is “parity” in the investment effort of the Government in the two corridors. Thus, he explained that in the next Budgets for 2023 both infrastructures will receive 3,343 million euros, of which 1,648 million will be for the Atlantic Corridor.
The Secretary of Transport provided these data in a forum convened by businessmen from Galicia, Asturias and Castilla y León who precisely complained about the tendency of governments to invest more in more populated areas thus promoting an increase in depopulation in the most isolated and peripheral areas.
Another shadow of suspicion now hangs over the Atlantic Corridor, since the latest revision of the European regulation of the European Transport Network of the EU excludes the Santiago-Vigo section of the basic network scheduled for the 2030 horizon. The MEPs of the PP Francisco Millán Mon and Pablo Arias They sent a question to the Commissioner for Transport of the European Commission, Adina Valean, to ask them about this exclusion that they consider “a setback”.
Secondly, Adif will begin this Monday renovation work on the Ourense-Monforte de Lemos-Lugo conventional railway linewhich will imply cuts in traffic, for which alternative road transport will be enabled.