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Spain’s High Speed Success
Spain’s High Speed Success
(Benidorm) The Spanish government recently unveiled a plan to invest 17 billion euros over the next two years to improve Spain’s transportation system and provide much-needed jobs in a country suffering from high unemployment. The vast majority of this huge amount is to be spent on two major projects; the motorway system and the RENFE high speed rail system. It is hoped that Spain will overtake France as the country with more high speed rail lines than any other.
Two years ago, nearly 90 per cent of the six million people travelling between Madrid and Barcelona went by air. Now the number of train travellers on the route has surpassed air passengers, and the trajectory is ever upward.
Since a high-end, high-speed rail connection between Barcelona and Madrid opened in 2008, a 325-mile journey that takes about six hours by car can be completed in just two hours and 38 minutes, from city centre to city centre. The shift has political and economic benefits for Spain, which like other European Union countries has set out to lower carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent over the next ten years. Emissions per passenger on a high-speed train are about a quarter of those generated by flying or driving.
But those who board the ‘Alta Velocidad Española’ popularly known as (AVE) or Spanish High Speed – are not solely motivated by green intentions. Like high-speed railways in France and China, Renfe – Spain’s national train operator – has performed the ultimate green sleight of hand by simply making the low-emissions option more comfortable and convenient.
"Since the day this train opened, I have never, never set foot on the plane again," said Carlos Martínez, 31, a lawyer who travels between Madrid and Barcelona twice a week. "Why would anyone fly?"
Here, perhaps more than in any other country, the new high-speed train service has consciously set out to turn traditional stereotypes about train travel and plane travel on their head. Unlike the French, who sought to maintain a low-cost image as their trains gained speed, the Spanish rail operators decided to go upscale, said Josep Valls, a professor of marketing at the Esade Business School in Barcelona.
The train tickets cost as much as plane tickets – about 130 euros one way at the moment – although cheaper advance fares can be found on the internet. AVE offers assigned reclining seats, computer outlets, movies, headsets, good food and even gloved attendants. "It is not about the environment, it’s that people are very satisfied by these trains," Professor Valls said. "This is really changing the paradigm of travel for Europe." Other AVE lines connect Madrid with Seville and with Málaga.
He predicted that eventually all European routes under 800 miles would be dominated by train travel, with a high-speed train travelling, say, from Barcelona to Paris – 520 miles as the crow or plane flies – in a little over four hours. Professor Valls said that Spaniards had so decisively opted for the comfort and convenience of trains that traditional airlines might not be able to compete. The number of flights between Madrid and Málaga has halved since the route between those cities opened in 2007.
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