The Ministry of Transport and the director of railway infrastructure, Adif, has to build an alternative to the high-speed line between Madrid and Barcelona which is now considering in the Catalan territory a new route to reach directly from Lleida to the La Sagrera station in Barcelona, without having to go to Sants or passing first through the “Camp de Tarragona” station.
This project is part of a broader expansion of the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line that the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Oscar Puente, presented on Monday during a media breakfast in the capital that will allow trains to move from the current speed of 300 km/h to 350, and it will be possible to connect the two cities by train in “less than two hours,” he said.
In addition, there will be news in Catalonia regarding access to the AVE, the most important of which is the alternative that will connect Lleida directly to Barcelona, without having to go down the train to Tarragona and without traveling, as is the case now, the entire coast to Sants station. The connection will be between Lleida station and La Sagrera, a little north.
“We need a new access, which is what we thought of with La Sagrera, not with Sants,” Puente explained, while railway sources indicate it was a request in the city. This new access will be direct to La Sagrera station without having to go through the tunnel connecting it to Sants.
According to the ministry, this new access will allow “savings.” “Big time” and “would help alleviate capacity issues Located in the section of the line dividing Camp de Tarragona and Barcelona Sants”, once Mediterranean Corridor. The minister said on Monday that “by 2027 or 2028 at the latest” is the deadline “for a person to be able to board the train in Almeria and reach the border with France without getting off the train.”
Currently, this branch must undergo a feasibility study as a first step, and it must also be done for the second new access proposed by the Ministry of AVE of Barcelona, on the new high-speed station at El Prat Airport, called Prat-Aeropuerto AVE which will also connect with Rodalíes and is expected to also connect the airport to the border line between Madrid, Barcelona and France.
This feasibility study will be organized in one phase and the work to be carried out within the framework of the said study will consist, in addition toAnalysis of socio-economic profitability, implementation of technically viable alternatives, functional analysis of the terminal, estimation of demand and analysis of the impact on mobility resulting from its operation, taking into account the interconnection with Cercanías services between El Prat de Llobregat and the airport.
To implement this, the Ministry still has to analyze its socio-economic profitability, technical alternatives, demand and impact on mobility.
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