Page 12 - Vía Libre Special - 25 Years of Spanish High Speed Rail
P. 12
SPECIAL
years of Spanish high speed rail
GONZALO RUBIO Evolution of the network
From 471 to over
2.900 kilometres
of high speed line
in 25 years
A
April 21 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
entrance into commercial service of the first Spanish
high speed line, covering the 474 kilometres between
the cities of Madrid and Seville. On that day Spain
became the fourth country in the world to take
on this mode of transport, after Japan (Tokyo-
Osaka, 1964), France (Paris-Lyon, 1981) and Germany
(Hannover-Wurzburg, 1991).
Since then the Spanish high speed, high
performance network has grown almost sevenfold Type of network
and over 350 million passengers have used these
services. The network currently covers a total that are strictly speaking high speed, the network
length of 2,919,8 kilometres, which ranks Spain as the currently extends over approximately 2,665 which
number one country in Europe and the second in would account for a nearly sixfold increase over the
the world, after China, in terms of operational high original length.
performance kilometres. The entry into service of the Madrid-Seville
If we consider only the kilometres of line high speed line on April 21, 1992, the same day that
12 Vía Libre • Special 25th Anniversary of the AVE Edition
