The Cantabrian-Mediterranean corridor runs through seven autonomous communities: Valencian Community, Aragón, Navarra, La Rioja, Castilla y León, Basque Country and Cantabria. It is a railway axis that crosses one of the most important logistics nodes in the country, Zaragoza, linking several of the ports that handle the most merchandise: Valencia, Sagunt, Castellón, Bilbao, Pasajes and Santander.
This morning, an event took place in Logroño in which business organizations from some of the territories involved participated, supported by the Governments of Cantabria, Castilla y León, La Rioja, Aragón and the Valencian Community. It is about giving impetus to an axis that concentrates a quarter of the population and a similar percentage of Spain’s GDP and international trade.
Business leaders have signed a joint declaration in which they urge the Government of Spain to incorporate the entire Cantabrian-Mediterranean Corridor into the Basic TEN-T network, with a commitment to completion in 2030 and advocate that modernization , the increase in transport capacity and the improvement of the benefits of passenger and freight rail services, in all their extension.
What do these actions consist of? On the one hand, the text highlights the importance of the railway as an essential tool of economic sustainability for the transport of passengers and goods. To then demand the “categorical modernization that will result in a significant increase in the freight and passenger transport capacity of the aforementioned railway corridor and the articulation of its entirety as a factor of competitiveness and business and territorial development.”
To this end, the signatories request a “general improvement in operating capacity and flexibility, an increase in the quality of service and greater safety, reliability and comfort, as well as an increase in maximum and commercial circulation speeds (with the consequent reduction of travel times), in passenger trains and the enhancement of competitiveness (more loading capacity, increased transport efficiency, longer train lengths, cost reduction) in terms of freight services”
As is obvious, “to obtain these improvements it will be necessary to consider, in the medium term, the provision in all sections of this corridor of the technical and operational characteristics of the most modern conventional line possible: double track, electrified” with the necessary technical characteristics. so that passenger trains can circulate at maximum speeds of 200 kilometers per hour and highly competitive freight trains, including those called Railway Highways.
The document calls for paying “special attention to the adequacy of access to large logistics nodes, as well as other smaller nodes in their area of ??influence, to guarantee the capacity and effectiveness of all operations related to the Corridor. And it calls for the carrying out “a study and enhancement of the potential of the Cantabrian-Mediterranean Corridor as a transport and logistics service for Railway Highways.”
In addition, the businessmen ask for “the preparation of a National Transportation Plan from which a Railway Infrastructure Plan 2025-2040 is derived, with an order of priorities and budget and a temporal programming, adequate and agreed upon with all the agents in which it should be including, as a priority axis, the Cantabrian-Mediterranean Corridor, which will be added to all the other corridors with which it is related, which will also have to be considered”
Finally, the need is expressed to create “an executive monitoring Commission, co-managed by the respective Autonomous Communities and where business organizations and Civil Society agents are definitively integrated.”
The president of the Federation of Companies of La Rioja, Jaime García-Calzada, host of the event, pointed out that “this Forum has become a historical milestone for all of us, because it brings us together in an inalienable objective and desire, as is to promote an infrastructure that is absolutely fundamental in the economic development and social cohesion of our regions.
Next, the president of the Valencian Business Confederation (CEV), Salvador Navarro, has criticized that the radial design of infrastructure has historically harmed the connections of peripheral areas and, therefore, slowed down their potential, and has defended that the Corridor Cantabrian-Mediterranean, “it is necessary to become the southern gateway to Europe, which requires efficient port facilities, like the ones we have, but also the connection of these ports and business parks with a high-capacity railway axis ”. Navarro has denounced that “there is a lack of true political will from the central government to accelerate it.”
