The tracks of the Vallès de Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (FGC) line can no longer absorb more trains. A train leaves Plaça Catalunya station every 112 seconds in rush hour (32 per hour) and, even so, the carriages are approaching their capacity limit in rush hour, when they run every five minutes from Sabadell and Terrassa and every two and a half minutes between Sant Cugat and Barcelona.
Since the existing infrastructure is no longer up to scratch, the only way out for the Generalitat to improve the offer is to build a new railway tunnel under Collserola. It would be a new corridor designed as a more direct alternative from one side of the mountain range, without stopping at the stations in the neighborhoods located on the mountain. This would make it possible to create semi-direct trains and reduce the journey time by 15 minutes from the two large cities of Vallès and the Catalan capital, which has increased since the reformulation of the service because it stops at each and every station.
It is not a new invention. The infrastructure master plan (PDI) 2021-2030 already includes it as one of the public works priorities for the next decade. In addition, the FGC strategic plan presented four years ago already indicated it as a more ambitious idea with a horizon set to 2030. The then president of the company, Ricard Font, commissioned a functional and feasibility study of the possible alternatives convinced that, in addition to the absorption of the demand, only by reducing the journey time could we convince all those who travel in private vehicles on the C-58 every day despite having a good alternative in public transport.
This document, which seemed condemned to sleep the dream of the righteous with the departure of Junts from the Department of Territory, has been recovered by the republicans, who now support in these papers the first step taken firmly, consisting in the bidding for the drafting of an informative study. It is a process that will last around two years, will cost two million and will give birth to the necessary document to one day face the construction project that defines the layout and carry out the corresponding works.
The aforementioned informative study will have to discern which is the best alternative to cross Collserola underground. If in the first report up to nine alternatives for entering Barcelona were analyzed, now only two will be developed, and both go through the same place: via Vallvidrera, next to the existing tunnel. The two options start from the same place from Sant Cugat and enter Barcelona at the same point, although then one of these would continue to Plaça Catalunya, like the current route, and the other would go to Arc de triumph According to the first report, they are the two alternatives that have a greater socio-economic return and a lower cost, approaching 900 million euros.
“It is necessary to continue expanding the Vallès metro, it is essential to take on new challenges”, defended the Minister of Territory, Ester Capella, when she announced the impetus to the project in a conference given at the Infrastructure Circle, in which she defended that could multiply by 2.5 the current transport capacity of the Catalan public company on the Vallès line, going from 60 million annual trips to 150.
The alternative of building a railway tunnel through Horta, connecting the Vallès through the area of ??the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and the Parc de l’Alba to Mundet and finally arriving at the future intermodal station of La Sagrera, remains parked . Since it would provide service to another area of ??the city, it is considered that it would not serve to decongest the existing tunnel, a fact that has led Territory officials to discard this option in the informative study designed exclusively for the current Vallès corridor.
The Horta tunnel is stuck at the bottom of the drawer as an option for the future, for the day when the Department of Territory observes the public transport map in its entirety, with a broader vision, as projected by the urban master plan metropolità (PDUM), instead of only what is incumbent on Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat.
During the conference at the Infrastructure Circle, Councilor Capella also assured that before the end of the year the agreement will be signed with the Ministry of Transport to build, through a management order, the two railway interchanges between the Vallès line of the FGC and the R8 from Rodalies to Sant Cugat, a work that will improve connections between Baix Llobregat and Vallès.
