Speeding growth for AVE
Friday, December 13, 2013 @ 2:02 AM
THE NEW Madrid to Alicante high-speed AVE train has experienced passenger growth of almost 50% since launching in June 2013, while some other long distance rail links have floundered. Official statistics published by the Ministry of Economic Development states that high speed lines and long distance trains along the east-Mediterranean corridor, which connects Madrid with different Castilian cities and eastern coast, lost 28.2% of travellers during the first nine months of the year, from 4.47 million in the same period of 2012 to 3.21 million in the current year while the Alicante route has proved to be one of the most popular.
The official data verifies the commitment and positive uptake by the public and especially the business community to the newest high-speed route operated by the Valencian department of Renfe. With new routes planned into Murcia and other zones, coastal towns such as Torrevieja are presently looking at possible ways to connect to the AVE line, which takes just over two and half hours to transport passengers between the capital and Alicante.
Nationally, through September, Renfe carried a total of 19.03 million passengers on its trains and long-distance AVE, representing an increase of 12.1% over the same period last year. The increase is related in part to new tariffs that came into effect in February 2013, involving an average 11% reduction in the price of all tickets, plus discounts that could be as high as 70% when a booking was made well in advance.
If the AVE and long distance lines maintain this volume of users for the remainder of the operating year, they will end 2013 with a record high rating, exceeding 25 million passengers.
The Councillor for Infrastructure, Isabel Bonig, said that the Mediterranean rail corridor is a major positive for the Region while stressing; "meeting deadlines on our new lines enables companies to plan their commercial strategies and rely on rail travel.” She insisted that "the basic infrastructure for constructing new lines for both Valencia and the rest of Spain will run on schedule, with most of the planned work completed in 2015. In addition, the restructuring of the circulation times of the lines will be improved. For example, the trip from Valencia to Barcelona is reduced to two hours and twenty minutes while the connection from Alicante will only be one hour.”
Source: RTN