The president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, the president of Adif, Ángel Contreras, and the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala, have today given the official green light to a long-promised and demanded project: the Alicante intermodal station, which today they have named ‘Alicante central station’, where once the works that will begin after the summer are completed, there will be an underground Tram station, connected to the current railway platforms.
The three have highlighted the importance for these administrations of integrating the new Alicante TRAM central station, the Adif railway station, and the future bus station into a large Intermodal Station.
Mazón has stressed the importance of this agreement reached between the three administrations “to offer citizens an integrated transport offer, we want the Alicante intermodality model to be an example at the national level of how to articulate our transport and our mobility in a series of powerful connection nodes linked to state networks.”
Adif and Adif AV make an area of ??around 25,500 square meters available to the project to carry out the works on the future Alicante TRAM central station. In the first phase, the Generalitat is enabled to begin the execution of the works on the land, at zero cost. Later, when the execution of the works is in an advanced state, Adif and Adif AV will transfer ownership of the land free of charge and permanently in favor of the Generalitat, which will acquire full ownership of the station and its infrastructure, both on the surface and in the subsoil.
The new station is planned below ground with two levels: lobby and platforms, minimizing the impact at street level. An intermediate floor will house two lobbies, one at each end of the station, which will be connected by side corridors. Likewise, the project includes the design of the access tunnel to it via Salamanca Avenue from the branch of the current Luceros station on Avenida de la Estación.
Specifically, the execution of the project and the works of the TRAM central station, which will be part of the future intermodal terminal, will involve an investment by the Generalitat Valenciana of more than 135 million euros.
Carlos Mazón has stressed that the new station will represent “a model of transport engineering, but beyond that, of coordination and compliance with the responsibilities of each administration, thinking about the general interest.”
In fact, the Generalitat’s proposal is to create a large intermodal node where long-distance flows, the TRAM system and urban, metropolitan and interurban bus services converge. In addition, the objective is to connect with the airport through the Torrellano bypass and a short distance from the cruise terminal of the Port of Alicante.
For the head of the Consell, “this project will offer a quality service for the mobility of citizens, in addition to turning it into a high-quality space, perfectly integrated into the city, which will be a focus of revitalization for all of Alicante.”
“Finally, in this term the Central station will be a reality,” stressed the popular president, after inaugurating a 1.5 million project at the Luceros station to improve the connectivity, signaling and security of arriving TRAM convoys. currently there.
The head of the Consell has valued the agreement with Adif to make it possible to start this project and end the “plug” that existed until now, one of the works that, in his opinion, “slept the sleep of the righteous” until the arrival of the current Valencian Government.
Mayor Barcala has described this central Tram station as “the second great revolution within the Alicante Transport System” and has especially highlighted the fact that “the implementation of this station must lay the foundations for the expansion of the tram towards the southern neighborhoods of the city.”
“That all modes of transport are connected in a few meters in a way that avoids the image of travelers with their suitcases traveling along Estación Avenue and accessing the TRAM in Luceros to be able to travel to the towns on the northern coast of the province, It represents a qualitative leap, the second great revolution after the implementation of the TRAM in Alicante and that is now a reality,” the mayor also commented.
For her part, the Government delegate in the Valencian Community, Pilar Bernabé, has shown that the intermodal station project was promoted “by the previous government of Ximo Puig, which was absolutely committed to intermodality and sustainable mobility.” , and continued that with the free transfer of the land “the Government of Spain has already complied” and that now it is up to the Generalitat to execute the work.
