The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, has denied in Alicante that the province’s airport needs – “at least in the short term” – a second runway to respond to its potential growth. In his speech at the Alicante Forum, organized by the newspaper Información, Puente assured that “the airlines, which are the ones who pay with their taxes, do not need them; And if you don’t believe me, ask Javier Gándara, whose company -easyJet- has just opened a base in Alicante.”
Puente recalled that the Alicante-Elche airport receives around 16 million travelers annually, and that London’s Gatwick airfield reaches 35 million with a single runway. However, the minister believes that with the expansion of its terminal, for which he has committed an investment of more than 600 million euros, Alicante-Elche could receive up to 26 million passengers without problems.
“And if it is detected that in order to grow it is necessary to build a second runway, there is no problem,” the minister then noted. He recalled that Aena is interested in expanding the Barcelona airport, where it has come to the conclusion that it can only grow with a second runway, “but there is no consensus in the territory to do so.”
Puente has stated that he feels “very comfortable” with the technical analyzes of the DORA system (Airport Management Document), established by a law promoted in 2014 by the PP government: “let us let the technicians be the ones, who share our objectives, which is to grow. , who decide what they need.” What Aena plans to do, therefore, is to provide more fingers to the Alicante terminal in order to increase the number of operations per hour.
Regarding the rail connection between the city and the airport, Puente has assured that “we are going to put the turbo” to execute this much-demanded infrastructure and the Torrellano variant, although he did not want to compromise deadlines, “but we are going to put all the meat on the grill so that the variant is done as quickly as possible.”
The minister plans to hold a meeting today with Mayor Luis Barcala in which he plans to detail other projects, but during his speech he said “we have to free the Benalúa roads.” However, he has reiterated that the electrification of the current line “is unavoidable”, even if it is provisional until the variant is executed, so as not to cut off the Mediterranean corridor.
Puente has also indicated that the ministry is studying eliminating the AP-7 toll on the Alicante ring road, with the aim of “decongesting” the A-70 highway, which “supports 100,000 vehicles daily.”
“Obviously, we have to consider this third rail that is being demanded, but this is a solution many years in the future,” he warned, as it would involve around 300 million euros of investment and long deadlines for a problem that needs “solutions.” “Yes, because there is a lot of traffic, there is congestion and there are accidents.” Abolishing the toll would, according to technical studies, allow for the immediate transfer of some 20,000 vehicles per day from the A-70 to the AP-7, largely heavy traffic that is “tremendously harmful, contributing to congestion and accidents.”
