A council of ministers meeting on 14 May saw the Portuguese government advance several projects that have been bottlenecked for years. Besides finally deciding on the location of the new Lisbon airport, a project complete with building a new bridge over the Tagus River, the ministers also moved on the high-speed rail connection between Lisbon and Madrid.
The two capitals of the Iberian Peninsula have not been connected by a high-speed rail service since Spanish operator Renfe axed its night train on the route, leaving travellers with no convenient alternative to flying. There are currently 40 daily flights between Lisbon and Madrid and another 20 between Lisbon and Porto and the new rail service should reduce ait traffic on both routes.
“Recovering the night train that connects Lisbon with Madrid is vital to facilitate public transport mobility between the countries of the Iberian Peninsula”, tweeted Spanish MP Júlia Boada in November last year.
The tracks will be built in stages, with travel time from one end to another being cut to 6 hours by 2027. Once completed, a journey from Lisbon to Madrid should only take 3 hours, from Lisbon to Porto 1 hour and 15 minutes and from Porto to Vigo just 50 minutes. Within Portugal, the impact will also be a cut in the time to travel from Lisbon to Elvas to 2 hours by 2025 and to around 1 hour in 2034, once the entire track is fully running.
The Badajoz-Placencia and Toledo-Madrid segments are already built. The connection Évora-Elvas and Placencia-Talayuela connections are currently under construction and set to enter into service in 2025 and 2027 respectively. The third bridge over the Tagus, which will support the segment from Lisbon to Poceirão, still needs to be built, as well as the Poceirão-Évora and Talayuela-Toledo connections.
Spain and Portugal will need to closely work together to coordinate infrastructure issues that frequently impede cross-border trains, such as gauge, voltage, and signalling systems. According to Euronews, Renfe would need to invest €15 million to adapt part of its rolling stock to Portuguese infrastructure.
The schedule of investments will also need to be set by the two countries to ensure the project is executed in a coordinated and timely manner, to ensure the optimisation of the European funds available.
