Spain has third best high-speed rail network in the world
If you’re thinking of Euro railing then you may want to consider including Spain’s excellent high speed rail network.
Is it a coincidence that the acronym of Alta Velocidad Espanola is ‘AVE’, the Spanish word for ‘bird’? Or has the high-speed network Spain ambitiously aspires, been aptly titled to personify these trains as birds of prey, effortlessly soaring across the land from city to city, covering vast distances in no time at all? Almost unnoticed to the rest of the world, for the past two decades Spain has been locked in a frenzy of fervently constructing a burgeoning high-speed railway system.
Before the year is out Spain will overtake France and become European leaders in high-speed rail travel, possessing the world’s third longest high-speed rail track.
A six billion euro 2.230 km AVE high-speed line connecting Madrid to Valencia is due to open on December 18 2010 and will mean that only China, with a 3,000 kilometer line and Japan, with a 2,500 kilometer connection, will be ahead of Spain in AVE networks.
Not only will the 2,000 kilometer track, which links two of Spain’s most important cities, boost tourism and trade, but it will increase employment levels. According to a study by Accenture, it has been estimated that the Valencia-Madrid line will create 136,000 new jobs in the next five years. And in a country where unemployment lies at a staggeringly high 20 percent, projects like the new AVE network will offer relief to the thousands it will employ.
Not only will the Valencia-Madrid line create thousands of new jobs, but by transporting 3.6 million passengers annually, who will be refraining from using cars or air transport, the AVE line will slash CO2 emissions by 842,000 tonnes by 2016.
Spain is a nation with a reputation of being slightly ‘backward’ when it comes to arenas of technology. According to the Socialist government’s Transport Minister Jose Blanco, Spain’s sophisticated and enviable high-speed rail network will “shatter clichés” associated with Spain being an unsophisticated nation living in the past.
“The development of the high-speed network will generate jobs and wealth, benefit the environment and reduce the number of road deaths,” said Jose Blanco, before adding that AVE will be the “emblem of the modernization of Spain.”
Spain’s ambitious high-speed railway transport plans to not stop at Valencia, as by 2012 Spain will be linked to the French to the French high-speed network, TGV, at Perpignan and will later link the Atlantic to Bordeaux.
Long gone are the days when you could only get around Spain on a donkey down a dirt track!