Extention of Coast Railway.
Marbella will soon be connected to the Spanish Rail Network. The line will run from the existing Fuengirola line to San Pedro. And later will link Malaga City with Algeciras by rail. New stations on the first section will be located at Puerto De Cabopino, Las Dunas, Costal Del Sol Hospital, Marbella, Marbella West, Puerto Banus and San Pedro.
Sur in English
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Across the Straight of Gibraltar
Acoss the Straights of Gibraltar.
An European Union committee is at the moment studying a proposed project for a 40km railway bridge or tunnel link between Punta Polomas, near Algeciras Spain and Malabata in Northern Morocco where a high speed rail line is under construction.
The Olive Press.
An European Union committee is at the moment studying a proposed project for a 40km railway bridge or tunnel link between Punta Polomas, near Algeciras Spain and Malabata in Northern Morocco where a high speed rail line is under construction.
The Olive Press.
Monday, July 27, 2009
AVE Madrid - Barcelona takes Larger Share of Market.
Talgo’s 380 km/h Avril train to take on the airlines
27 July 2009
SPAIN: In its first 18 months of full operation, the Madrid - Barcelona high speed line has made significant inroads into market share on what was the country’s busiest domestic air corridor. But RENFE Operadora believes it needs to do more if rail is to achieve total dominance.
With 300 km/h operation the journey time is 2 h 40 min non-stop, or around 3 h with calls at Zaragoza, Lleida and Camp de Tarragona. According to Ignacio de Rebeira Sánchez, Head of Innovation at RENFE’s High Speed & Long Distance business, a 2 h 30 min timing is essential; he believes this will be achievable with 320 km/h running, which he considers more realistic than the 350 km/h for which the line was designed.
Whilst the Siemens-built Series 103 and Talgo/Bombardier Series 102 sets are designed for 350 km/h, the gauge-changing trains used for through services off the standard-gauge line are limited to 250 km/h. Speaking at a workshop in Barcelona on June 18-19, organised by the Spanish Railway Foundation to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the start of gauge-changing trains with the Barcelona - Genève Catalan Talgo, Talgo’s Director of Research & Development Dr Emilio García announced that higher speed trials will be undertaken later this year. A prototype trainset derived from the Series 130 will be used to verify the performance of the gauge-changing wheelsets at 300 km/h.
These tests are also intended to contribute to another project, which will see the emergence in 2011 of Talgo’s next-generation trainset, code-named Avril (Alta Velocidad Rueda Independiente Ligero). Technical details are under wraps until mid-2010, but like the Series 130 Avril will have two driving vehicles on powered bogies and 12 articulated trailers riding on 11 single wheelsets.
To allow train operators to offer fares competitive with low-cost airlines, Avril is intended to provide up to 700 seats in a 200 m single-deck trainset. Moving the traction equipment underfloor will release space in the power cars, and Talgo plans to capitalise on the short 13 m length of the trailers by pushing the width out to 3 200 mm, permitting 3+2 seating in second class.
According to company insiders, Avril is being designed for operation at no less than 380 km/h, with inter-car linkages helping to keep the wide bodies within the loading gauge and possibly providing a small degree of tilt in curves. While the prototype is envisaged as a standard-gauge trainset, it is also seen as a platform for a future gauge-convertible version. Potential customers are reportedly ‘very interested’.
Railway Gazette.
27 July 2009
SPAIN: In its first 18 months of full operation, the Madrid - Barcelona high speed line has made significant inroads into market share on what was the country’s busiest domestic air corridor. But RENFE Operadora believes it needs to do more if rail is to achieve total dominance.
With 300 km/h operation the journey time is 2 h 40 min non-stop, or around 3 h with calls at Zaragoza, Lleida and Camp de Tarragona. According to Ignacio de Rebeira Sánchez, Head of Innovation at RENFE’s High Speed & Long Distance business, a 2 h 30 min timing is essential; he believes this will be achievable with 320 km/h running, which he considers more realistic than the 350 km/h for which the line was designed.
Whilst the Siemens-built Series 103 and Talgo/Bombardier Series 102 sets are designed for 350 km/h, the gauge-changing trains used for through services off the standard-gauge line are limited to 250 km/h. Speaking at a workshop in Barcelona on June 18-19, organised by the Spanish Railway Foundation to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the start of gauge-changing trains with the Barcelona - Genève Catalan Talgo, Talgo’s Director of Research & Development Dr Emilio García announced that higher speed trials will be undertaken later this year. A prototype trainset derived from the Series 130 will be used to verify the performance of the gauge-changing wheelsets at 300 km/h.
These tests are also intended to contribute to another project, which will see the emergence in 2011 of Talgo’s next-generation trainset, code-named Avril (Alta Velocidad Rueda Independiente Ligero). Technical details are under wraps until mid-2010, but like the Series 130 Avril will have two driving vehicles on powered bogies and 12 articulated trailers riding on 11 single wheelsets.
To allow train operators to offer fares competitive with low-cost airlines, Avril is intended to provide up to 700 seats in a 200 m single-deck trainset. Moving the traction equipment underfloor will release space in the power cars, and Talgo plans to capitalise on the short 13 m length of the trailers by pushing the width out to 3 200 mm, permitting 3+2 seating in second class.
According to company insiders, Avril is being designed for operation at no less than 380 km/h, with inter-car linkages helping to keep the wide bodies within the loading gauge and possibly providing a small degree of tilt in curves. While the prototype is envisaged as a standard-gauge trainset, it is also seen as a platform for a future gauge-convertible version. Potential customers are reportedly ‘very interested’.
Railway Gazette.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
AVE Trains Cut Carbon Imissions
Imagine travelling by train from London to Brighton in 23 minutes or to Southampton in 32 minutes. Imagine letting the train take the strain from Oxford to Brighton via the outskirts of London in 50 minutes. Un-thinkable, of course.
But not for us living in Andalucia. We will soon be able to travel on a network of AVE (Alto Velocidad Espanola) rail routes inter-connecting all the regional cities in not much under an hour. Malaga to Savills in 55 minutes, Cadiz to Granada in 1 houe and 38 minutes, and Ronda (where I live) to Malaga, Sevilla, Cordoba and Granada in less than an houe. Hurrah!
The Spanish Government is committed to constructing 10,000 kilometers of high-speed rail routes throughout Spain by 2020. The plan means that 90% of the population will be no more than 50km from a station on an AVE route. It is no surprise then that President Obama recently praised Spain`s railways while launching similar plans in the United States. The plaudits are well deserved. There are already more high speed routes in Spain than either France or Germany, and both are well ahead of the United Kingdom.
Funded partly by European Union grants and loans from the European Investment Bank, the network is cutting Spains carbon imissions because AVE trains use 19%less energy than conventional trains.
Source. Ray Ward. The Olive Press.
But not for us living in Andalucia. We will soon be able to travel on a network of AVE (Alto Velocidad Espanola) rail routes inter-connecting all the regional cities in not much under an hour. Malaga to Savills in 55 minutes, Cadiz to Granada in 1 houe and 38 minutes, and Ronda (where I live) to Malaga, Sevilla, Cordoba and Granada in less than an houe. Hurrah!
The Spanish Government is committed to constructing 10,000 kilometers of high-speed rail routes throughout Spain by 2020. The plan means that 90% of the population will be no more than 50km from a station on an AVE route. It is no surprise then that President Obama recently praised Spain`s railways while launching similar plans in the United States. The plaudits are well deserved. There are already more high speed routes in Spain than either France or Germany, and both are well ahead of the United Kingdom.
Funded partly by European Union grants and loans from the European Investment Bank, the network is cutting Spains carbon imissions because AVE trains use 19%less energy than conventional trains.
Source. Ray Ward. The Olive Press.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
High Speed Trains Take Bigger Market Share.
Spain which entered the high-speed era in 1992 with the opening of the Madrid-Seville line and is now the most ambitious country in Europe in the rate of growth of its high-speed network. Having just completed the Madrid to Barcelona line, Spain now has 1,600km of high speed line in operation, with another 2,200 under construction and 1,700km planned.
A key construction project is the line north from Barcelona into the French Sud-Est line. This line is of particular significance for European high-speed rail policy for reasons other than its 17 mile tunnel and the link between the Spanish and French networks which it brings. An intense debate is taking place between the Spanish, Catalan and French authorities as to whether the line will carry freight or be passenger only. The Catalan transport minister told me he was pressing strongly for it to be a mixed freight and passenger line, to take lorries off the route north and boost the economic dividend from the line. For the line to carry mixed traffic, however, requires not only a departure from French high-speed practice: it also has a major bearing on the engineering of the line, as it would need shallower gradients, and therefore also on its cost north of the French border, to which, politely, the French have suggested that the Spanish and/or Catalan governments might wish to contribute if they want the much costlier option. Here again the freight issue is rearing its head fairly starkly.
However, the most remarkable feature of Spanish high-speed rail is the sheer scale and rapidity of its development, in a country without an especially strong prior railway tradition. There is a debate about whether the lines were built in the right order. It was clearly a political decision by Philipe Gonzales to build the first line from Madrid to his home town of Seville – the deal is said to have been that Barcelona got the 1992 Olympics in return. But Barcelona now has its line too, and the Spanish government in 2005 published a national high-speed plan with a target of 10,000km of high-speed line by 2020 connecting all the nation’s provincial capitals, accounting for 90% of the population [show slide 3]. It estimates that the cost will be met from allocating 1.5% of GDP to national infrastructure until 2020, which it projects – with additional revenue from concessions – to give a cumulative investment budget of 250bn Euros of which half – yes, half – will go to rail. Spain will be spending 10bn Euros on rail infrastructure investment this year alone, 6bn of it on new high-speed lines. These figures are simply mind-boggling: Network Rail’s has a £10bn budget for capacity enhancement for the next five years. The Spanish Transport Minister told me: “A high-speed fever has taken over the country,” perhaps the most expensive fever in Spanish history.
However, the Spanish are delighted with the results. They are particularly pleased by the initial success of the Madrid to Barcelona line, which only opened last February, with a fastest journey time of 2 hours 38 minutes for the 386 miles, about to come down further to 2 hours 15 minutes. When the service started a few months ago rail had only 16% of the combined train and air market; now [show slide 4] it has 48 per cent, and they expect this to rise to 70% or higher before long, which accords with the experience on similar lines such as London to Paris and Brussels. The load factor on these AVE services is also a high 65%.The traffic on the new AVE line to Malaga is starting to build up and is already taking large numbers of passengers from the domestic airlines.
A key construction project is the line north from Barcelona into the French Sud-Est line. This line is of particular significance for European high-speed rail policy for reasons other than its 17 mile tunnel and the link between the Spanish and French networks which it brings. An intense debate is taking place between the Spanish, Catalan and French authorities as to whether the line will carry freight or be passenger only. The Catalan transport minister told me he was pressing strongly for it to be a mixed freight and passenger line, to take lorries off the route north and boost the economic dividend from the line. For the line to carry mixed traffic, however, requires not only a departure from French high-speed practice: it also has a major bearing on the engineering of the line, as it would need shallower gradients, and therefore also on its cost north of the French border, to which, politely, the French have suggested that the Spanish and/or Catalan governments might wish to contribute if they want the much costlier option. Here again the freight issue is rearing its head fairly starkly.
However, the most remarkable feature of Spanish high-speed rail is the sheer scale and rapidity of its development, in a country without an especially strong prior railway tradition. There is a debate about whether the lines were built in the right order. It was clearly a political decision by Philipe Gonzales to build the first line from Madrid to his home town of Seville – the deal is said to have been that Barcelona got the 1992 Olympics in return. But Barcelona now has its line too, and the Spanish government in 2005 published a national high-speed plan with a target of 10,000km of high-speed line by 2020 connecting all the nation’s provincial capitals, accounting for 90% of the population [show slide 3]. It estimates that the cost will be met from allocating 1.5% of GDP to national infrastructure until 2020, which it projects – with additional revenue from concessions – to give a cumulative investment budget of 250bn Euros of which half – yes, half – will go to rail. Spain will be spending 10bn Euros on rail infrastructure investment this year alone, 6bn of it on new high-speed lines. These figures are simply mind-boggling: Network Rail’s has a £10bn budget for capacity enhancement for the next five years. The Spanish Transport Minister told me: “A high-speed fever has taken over the country,” perhaps the most expensive fever in Spanish history.
However, the Spanish are delighted with the results. They are particularly pleased by the initial success of the Madrid to Barcelona line, which only opened last February, with a fastest journey time of 2 hours 38 minutes for the 386 miles, about to come down further to 2 hours 15 minutes. When the service started a few months ago rail had only 16% of the combined train and air market; now [show slide 4] it has 48 per cent, and they expect this to rise to 70% or higher before long, which accords with the experience on similar lines such as London to Paris and Brussels. The load factor on these AVE services is also a high 65%.The traffic on the new AVE line to Malaga is starting to build up and is already taking large numbers of passengers from the domestic airlines.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Level Crossing Death in Ronda
A woman car driver was killed when her car was hit by a train at the crossing near the Virgin de la Paz Military Barracks. There is no barrier at the crossing. The accident happend at around 5pm. The vehicle was dragged 30 metres along the tracks and the body of the victom was thrown from the car.
The accident as alarmed local people and as once again put into question the use of level crossings without barriers in the Ronda area. Last year a simular incident at another Ronda crossing resulted in the death of a local man.
The accident as alarmed local people and as once again put into question the use of level crossings without barriers in the Ronda area. Last year a simular incident at another Ronda crossing resulted in the death of a local man.
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