Spain has applied to the European Investment Bank (EIB) for a EUR 1 billion loan to further develop the rail freight Atlantic Corridor linking the main Basque port cities of Bilbao and Pasajes with Madrid and Paris.
The rail freight corridor is essential not only for facilitating high-speed trains between Spain and France, but also creating new rail freight opportunities for the Basque region’s manufacturing industry, one of Spain’s most important exporters. It’s projected that direct rail freight services from Bilbao, on the Bay of Biscay, and Pasajes, would see around 800,000 lorry transits a year switched to rail transport. The infrastructure project has a total budget of EUR 6 billion, and the latest application from Spanish central Government follows a previous EUR1.4 billion loan. Works began on the corridor in 2006 and they are expected to last until 2025, when new rail stations in San Sebastian, Bilbao and Vitoria are due to open. In the short-to-medium range (by 2019), Vitoria will be the key interconnecting point Iberian-UIC gauge, while capacity is being developed on the French side (which already consists of a double track electrified line compatible for 740-m long trains) it is therefore crucial to develop a plan to fully exploit its potential. Freight links between Spain and France at the border point at Hendaye will also be strengthened, with interconnections to the Spanish regions of Navarre and Aragon. Building up know how, sharing best practices, involving stakeholders at local and national level from different Member States, with the ultimate goal of including logistic platforms in the Corridor trans-governance, will be a crucial element to succeed in bringing about multimodality. Vitoria, as stated before, will be the interconnecting point of the two gauges for years, and is also a crucial railway node along the main road route from Portugal to France: an adequate logistic platform is urgently needed, with adequate terminals for rail-road and rail-rail swift interconnections. A further step in this direction will be to seek cooperation with large logistics and productive zones linked to the Corridor – as, for example Luxembourg, along the North Sea-Med corridor, or Zaragoza, on the Mediterranean Corridor. In 2016, works started in order to install the ERTMS signalling system in the Atlantic Corridor in Spain. The project was awarded to a consortium formed by Alstom, Siemens Rail Automation and CAF Signalling, for a total amount of EUR 63.2 million. The Level 1 ERTMS train protection system will be installed in the Atlantic Corridor, on the La Coruña-Santiago and Santiago-Vigo section. Alstom will install its Atlas 100 solution, for ERTMS level 1 between Redondela and Villagarcía de Arousa (35 kilometres of dual track) on the Vigo-Santiago high-speed section of the Atlantic Corridor. This link has Alstom Smartlock interlockings. The company will also install an ERTMS control centre with Atlas technology. Siemens will install its Trainguard Futur 1300 for Level 1 ERTMS on the Vilagarcía de Arousa – Santiago – Cerceda link, where the interlockings use Siemens Trackguard Westrace technology; and on the Cerceda – La Coruña link. Siemens will also install two new ERTMS control centres with Trainguard Futur technology to control the Atlantic Corridor train protection systems. CAF Signalling will install its Level 1 ERTMS AURIGA system on the Vigo-Urzaiz – Redondela high-speed link, which currently uses electronic interlocking with QUASAR S3e CAF Signalling technology. Each member of the Consortium will install its ERTMS system on connections where they have previously installed signalling technologies.
Better rail-road-waterway connections
The Atlantic Corridor, formerly known as Rail Freight Corridor No. 4, includes existing and planned lines between Sines / Setúbal / Lisbon / Aveiro / Leixões – Algeciras / Madrid / Bilbao / Zaragoza – Bordeaux / La Rochelle / Nantes / Paris / Le Havre / Strasbourg – Mannheim, crossing the international borders of Vilar Formoso/Fuentes de Oñoro, Elvas/Badajoz, Irun/Hendaye and Forbach/Saarbrücken. Germany joined Portugal, Spain and France as partner of the Atlantic Corridor with the extension of the RFC to Mannheim via the French/German border in Forbach/Saarbrücken. The mission of the Atlantic Corridor principally covers the management of existing infrastructures, without additional investments, through centralized management of capacity allocation, traffic management and customer relationship. Subsequently, the Atlantic Corridor also works as a coordination platform between Portugal, Spain, France and Germany concerning the investments in infrastructure, overcoming technical and operational barriers, promoting interoperability and, ultimately, increasing the competitiveness of rail freight. The corridor’s main missing link is the cross-border connection between Lisboa and Madrid. The section Porto-Valladolid is affected by the lack of electrification on the Spanish side. Additionally, problems of interoperability (difference in gauge, electrification, signaling systems and train length) affect the existing San Sebastian-Bordeaux section. The optimal path for an interoperable route for freight across Madrid, and from there on to Vitoria is also yet to be resolved, as are any subsequent infrastructure requirements along the sections concerned. Portugal and Spain are also implementing interoperable systems along the Atlantic Coast. “On the rail component, interoperability, notably related with track gauge, won’t be fully achieved by 2030, although critical bottlenecks associated to that lack of interoperability, notably in the French-Spanish border, will be significantly reduced. Moreover, by 2030, all the four corridor cross-border sections will be connected in UIC gauge”, a Work Plan realized by Carlo Secchi, European Coordinator for the Atlantic Corridor, revealed. “In order to ensure a seamless transport, then, a priority will be the interoperability and capacity on crossing the two core nodes of high complexity, Paris and Madrid, interlinked to other corridors and high-speed passengers and freight flows. For Paris, the issue is twofold: ensure capacity and connectivity both on rail and on the inland waterway. In Madrid, a major breakthrough supported by the EU is the on-going connection of the two separated high speed rail branches of the Spanish network in Madrid, through the Atocha-Chamartin tunnel. Now, new services for long-range passenger flows along the corridor are expected to be made available”, the analysis in the report shows. Notwithstanding the on-going review of the European Deployment Plan (EDP) by the Coordinator in charge of ETCS/ERTMS – to be included in the specific Work Plan, in it worth highlighting the bulk of know-how on ERTMS gathered in Spain and the fast pace of deployment in the German branch of the Corridor, where baseline 3 level 2 is planned. Furthermore, on high-speed sections ERTMS deployment is advanced. It will therefore be important to pay attention to other factors determining the actual interoperability and the free cross-border flows of trains, in the framework of the two cross-border cooperation groups of the Corridor Spain-Portugal and France-Spain.
by Elena Ilie
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