Asturias is still on hold. The high speed arrived in Murcia this Monday, with an inaugural trip in which King Felipe VI and the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez. The first commercial route will be already today. Murcia is also ahead of Asturias in the race for high speed, as Badajoz and Orense recently did. As regards the motorway of the sea, Asturias is also lagging behind: it will arrive before Vigo. It will be in June 2023 when the maritime connection between the most populous city in Galicia and Liverpool (United Kingdom) begins to operate. Meanwhile, nothing new is known about the motorway of the sea between gijon and Nantes (France), which operated with relative success between 2010 and 2014 and which the governments of Spain and Asturias promised to recover four years ago.
The AVE arrives in Murcia three years after work began on the section between Beniel and the Carmen station, which has involved an investment of 175.9 million. The accumulated delay is one year, as it should have opened to commercial circulation at the end of 2021. Work started in April 2019 for a 25.7-kilometre section. The route includes 16 viaducts totaling more than 5 kilometers in length, four overpasses, nine underpasses and an 878-meter tunnel.
To celebrate the arrival of high-speed, as it has done on other routes and as it will foreseeably do when the high-speed route between León and Asturias opens next May, Renfe has put 30,000 tickets on sale at 19 euros between Murcia and Madrid, in both directions. Tickets that can be used until December 9 of next year. During the first twenty hours, the public operator sold more than these 10,000 tickets.
Renfe has arranged eight daily AVE frequencies (four in each direction) between Madrid and Murcia. It is a service more per sense in relation to the current offer. Four daily departures are offered: at 6:25 a.m., at 11:50 a.m., at 1:55 p.m. and, the last one, at 7:25 p.m. The daily offer for the new relationship is 2,824 places. The AVE will cover the distance between Madrid and Murcia in just 2 hours and 45 minutes in the case of the four trains, two in each direction, which will start and end at the Madrid Chamartín Clara Campoamor station and intermediate stops in Orihuela and Elche. The other four AVE services will start and end at the Puerta de Atocha station in Madrid, with intermediate stops in Orihuela, Elche, Alicante, Villena, Albacete and Cuenca. The travel time for these convoys will be from 3 hours and 25 minutes.
The public operator will use the S-112 model for the Madrid-Murcia AVE service, popularly known as “Pato”, one of the most technologically advanced trains currently available. The S-112 has 12 cars, fully accessible for people with disabilities. Although it can reach up to 330 kilometers per hour, on the way to Murcia it will travel at a maximum speed of 300 kilometers per hour. It will have 353 seats. According to Renfe, the seats are “very comfortable, folding and with footrests”, and also “each seat has individual lighting and a folding table”.
Everything indicates that in the case of the AVE to Asturias, Renfe will allocate Avril trains of variable gauge (displaceable tread), which can also widely exceed 300 kilometers per hour and will leave the travel time between Madrid and Oviedo under three hours, which which will mean significant time savings for users, since the journey is currently covered by Alvia trains, in the best of cases, in 4 hours and 24 minutes. In the case of Gijón-Madrid, it will go from the current 4 hours and 59 minutes to 3 hours and 26 minutes, according to the Ministry’s calculations.
Also in the case of the Asturias sea motorway, it will be overtaken, in this case by Galicia. The Vigo-Liverpool motorway of the sea, whose creation was advanced by “El Faro de Vigo”, from the same group as LA NUEVA ESPAÑA, will operate from June 2023 and, according to current forecasts, will move 14,700 trailers each year. Two ships will carry out two weekly frequencies will allow a plant in the United Kingdom to supply almost 90 percent of the components to manufacture 51,000 electric vans each year of the Vauxhall, Opel, Peugeot and Citroën brands in their electric version, mainly to supply the market British. The annual turnover will exceed 150 million.
The presentation of the project took place only a few days ago. The objective is to connect the Balaídos and Ellesmere factories of the multinational Stellantis by sea, which share the production of electric light commercial vehicles, a segment in which the company is the leader in Europe, for the transport of parts, components and other merchandise. The opening of this motorway of the sea will make it possible to reduce energy consumption by 37 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent compared to those currently generated by road transport.
The one in Liverpool, which could be opened to other products in the future, will be the fourth motorway of the sea from Vigo. The first, inaugurated in 1974, was precisely the one in Nantes, the same one that Gijón now intends to recover. The other two were those of Tangier (Morocco) and Cebrugge (Belgium).
As for the motorway of the sea between Gijón and Nantes, there have been four years of negotiations for its reopening. It operated for four years with some success from passengers and carriers and significant involvement from the administrations in the form of subsidies: it received 4 million in aid from the European Union and 27 million from the Spanish and French governments. But it closed in 2014, when the shipping company claimed that it had accumulated a deficit of 6 million, which allowed it to take advantage of a clause in the contract to stop operating. Negotiations with Balearia, which had shown interest in reopening the maritime connection between the ports of El Musel and Saint Nazarie, have been stalled for several years, although the Government of the Principality is confident that they will come to fruition in the coming months.
