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Ay, ay, ay... I agree with the high-speed schemes and, for example, the've meant that in Spain taking a train instead of a plane is fashionable, fast and reliable again, but the situation in here is this: since high-speed lines have the international gauge and are brand new the older lines with Spanish gauge are nearly dead.
For example, get the new AVE from Madrid to Barcelona: nice ICE3, fast as hell, and so on... if you're travelling between major cities. The medium-size cities along the conventional line have seen their services reduced or even they don't have them anymore; nowadays there is not alternative, you either take the AVE or the bus. Tickets are more expensive, in spite of the special offers, and infraestructures that already exist and that are useful to people not travelling long distances aren't getting enough money to keep them in good shape, which means that in a few years are doomed. So much for the social side of the trains...
Another thing that is causing lots of problems here is where the new train stations for high-speed lines are being built: cities like Tarragona now have the train station miles away from the actual city, and public transport from the city to the station is...well... crap, which destroys one of the biggest advantages of trains in comparison with planes.
This is still going on with lines to be built in the future (for example, the new line from Seville to Granada, that appears pretty often on the news since people living between both cities are afread of losing their train services), and with lines that are already working (Avila has lost all the trains to the North of Spain), so I still don't understand how the thinking brains of people that plan this kind of things still can make the same mistakes all over the world.
Kind regards,
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7th May 2009, 15:46
