Transport and communication infrastructures by rail in Galicia

An opportunity for the regional economic development 1941-2011

Abstract

The study of the investment effort in railways in Spain reveals that some territories have had their iron roads long before others. The first Spanish railway line to be built and opened to commercial traffic was not on the Peninsula, but on the Caribbean island of Cuba. The Havana-Bejucal-Güines itinerary was the first itinerary open to transportation. This trace of the iron road had not been executed to boost passenger flows. The construction of this railway had taken place due to the importance of the merchandise that the island of Cuba was producing and its high added value: tobacco, sugar, molasses, rum, hardwoods. The construction of the iron roads in the Peninsula also presents many peculiarities. The first, as is well known, is that the railway line began to be executed from the interior of the peninsula towards the periphery, when the most rational thing would have been from the ports, through which the merchandise and raw materials for the iron road arrived, towards the interior of the peninsula. Secondly, regional territories such as Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, etc., suffered a delay in the execution of capital destined to build the access railway to these regions. The execution works of the iron roads in Galicia lasted for more than a century. The study of the modernization and operability of the railway shows us how, even in the second decade of the 21st century, Galicia has quite a few counties located geographically in terms of railways, since it has not yet been possible to modernize the iron road or the rolling stock. In this anomalous situation is, on the one hand, Ferrol and its region. Second, Lugo. Thirdly, we must mention the railway track owned by FEVE. Fourthly, the Vigo-Ourense connections are showing low territorial accessibility due to traveling on a conventional road that is not in adequate conditions to incorporate rolling stock with optimal features. Even more, the modernization of the iron road to Vigo with a connection in Ourense is being programmed based on a variant established in Maside-Cerdedo-Portela. The detour index penalizes this traffic. The most appropriate would be a splitting of the railway network along the itinerary: Ourense-Mondariz-Porriño-Vigo. Therefore, while some lines have, since 2011, when the La Coruña-Santiago-Ourense line covered by AVANT trains was opened to commercial traffic, a service offer with good accessibility by rail, others On the contrary, they have not been able to improve their operating conditions, which were being marketed in the 1980s and 1990s. In this reality is the La Coruña-Betanzos-Ferrol connection; La Coruña-Lugo-departure towards the plateau; and the operation of the FEVE Ferrol-Ribadeo-Gijón-Valmaseda metric gauge train. On the other hand, the modernization of the La Coruña-Ourense line enables a daily flow of passengers by traffic direction at attractive accessibility levels. However, the populations that are intercalated and that wish to cover these itineraries with rolling stock of regional trains continue to suffer the heavy burden of exceeding this journey in more than three hours. In a few words, there are two highly contrasted services of unequal quality that are being offered to provide a proximity service to the interstitial district populations: Orders; Lalin; Or Carballino. For this reason, we must still affirm that this modernization is not a fact.