One of lime and another of sand for the railway of Galiciawhere good news always ends up being overshadowed by orafter small disappointments. From the November 21 the Alvia route that connects the community with the entire north of the peninsula to Barcelona will undergo two important changes that will affect their schedules and travel times to cities in Castilla y León, Navarra and Aragón.
Starting next Monday, the Railway Infrastructure Administrator (Adif) will execute the total cut of the line between Ourense and Monforte of Lemos to be able to undertake his renewalforcing the road transfer between both cities.
This measure will last for 8 months and allows continuity to the works carried out between the old Galician railway junction and Lugo qthat will allow their improvement of safety, reliability and electrification according to the standards of the Atlantic corridor of goods.
And that same date was chosen by Renfe to undertake a change that was an open secret since last summer. The public operator will begin to circulate through the Burgos High Speed Line -inaugurated on July 21 and with almost testimonial traffic- for what is its train with the most kilometers and passengers in the entire network despite having only one daily frequency: almost 14 hours of travel, more than 1,300 kilometers and hundreds of passengers in their intermediate relations.
This line change will allow the circulation of higher speeds with the 730 series trains during the 208.5 kilometers of High Speed that there is between León, Venta de Baños and the Rosa Manzano station in Burgos; something that It already happens between Zaragoza and Barcelona for more than a decade.
for all cities located to the east of Burgos will mean a saving of about 41 minutes on your trip to León, not being the case from the west.
This double transshipment in Galician lands will cause the travel time to León is increased by half an hour. However, from then on and already on the path by which Avril trains will circulate towards Asturias in the next year the times will be cut short.
Until Palencia time will only increase by four minutes and by Burgos the trend will reverse until cut seven to current. Also other cities like Pamplona, Zaragoza (with eight minutes less travel time) or Miranda de Ebro (with 21 minutes of savings) will benefit.
The popularly known as “Octopus” due to the links it offers to Salamanca, the Basque Country or Asturias It has two heads on the Galician side. the station Vigo-Guixar has departures on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays; while the rest of the days it connects in Ourense through a Regional with the one from A Coruña and Santiago.
During the last months there has been speculation about the possibility that the trains with destination Vigo they had moved to Urzáiz station, Following in the footsteps of those from Madrid which are centralized in the terminal designed by Thom Mayne since last year.
This change would allow reduce travel time by another 15 minutes from the city of Olive to Ourense, providing an unprecedented connection to Vilagarcía from Arousa.
However, its backbone function in the nineteenth-century Miño line has made it continue to be one of the few circulations that can still be seen between Tui and the city of Las Burgas while waiting for the replacement of some suspended regional since the outbreak of the pandemic.
