Barcelona opens new tram station at Plaça de les Glòries square
New stop is first step towards connecting tram lines through city center
After two years of construction, a new tram station at Plaça de les Glòries Square in Barcelona opened on Thursday.
The new stop built in front of Glòries metro station provides service to the T4, T5, and T6 lines.
Barcelona metropolitan area transport authority (ATM) considers Glòries a major public transport hub that will connect tram, metro, and bus lines.
The new space is located in front of the Barcelona Design Museum, known as Disseny Hub Barcelona.
The new hub station, connecting the three different tram lines, will now replace the other stops that were used in the past to take the different tram lines. The Farinera stop was located in front of the Glòries shopping center, and Glòries Meridiana was located in front of the Els Encants market.
University student Víctor Villarejo, one of the first passengers to use the new tram stop, was pleased with the convenience it offered. "Now you just leave the metro and hop on straight to the tram," he told the Catalan News Agency (ACN).
The new tram station makes journies "much faster and has many trams stopping regularly,” another student coming from central Catalonia to Barcelona, Miquel Codina, said.
However, not everyone shared Víctor or Miquel's opinion.
“Depending on your destination, it was better to use the other stops," Meritxell Raventós, a regular public transport user, said. But she added that the connection with the metro station "is now better."
Uniting two separate networks
The construction of this new stop is part of the project to join the tram network across Diagonal Avenue.
It is planned that the first section between Plaça de les Glòries and the Verdaguer stop will be completed in the second half of 2024.
Currently, the Catalan capital has two separate tram networks that each have three slightly differing routes, connecting Barcelona's northern and southern edges with its surrounding cities.
One of the lines, Trambaix, is located from Plaça Francesc Macià on Diagonal in between the areas of Eixample and Sant Gervasi, operating through Les Corts and then to L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Esplugues de Llobregat, Cornellà de Llobregat, Sant Joan Despí and Sant Just Desvern.
The other line, Trambesòs, runs from the Ciutadella park through Glòries and Poblenou and toward Sant Adrià de Besòs and Badalona.
While Trambesòs will now continue until Verdaguer metro station, the rest of the route is still pending governmental authority and future steps, as no clear future path has yet been planned.