transportation

The Spanish Government has finally set a date for the first direct High Speed Train between Barcelona and Paris. Passengers will no longer have to switch trains near the French border and a direct TGV will link Paris and Barcelona from the 15^th of December. The journey will last 6 hours and 20 minutes, since there is no high-speed railway in the 200-kilometre stretch between Perpignan and Nîmes and trains circulate at a regular speed. The High-Speed railway between Nîmes and Montpellier should be operative by 2017, but the French Government announced last June that the construction of the 150 km between Montpellier and Perpignan would be delayed beyond 2030. The Catalan Executive as well as French and Catalan Euro MPs have requested the French Government to reconsider its decision after the EU has included the Mediterranean Railway Corridor among its 9 main transport priorities until 2020.

After years of debate, the new European Union’s Transport Priorities have finally been approved. The European Parliament has approved the Commission’s plan to build 9 major transport corridors connecting the continent from West to East, North to South and in diagonal. The Mediterranean Corridor for freight and passengers is one of these 9 priorities and will link Barcelona and Tarragona to the Gibraltar Straight and Central Europe, connecting major production centres, import/export infrastructures and tourist destinations. The final plan ignores the Spanish Government’s request to include the Centre Pyrenees Corridor as well, a project that was bypassing Catalonia and therefore Barcelona, despite being Spain’s main industrial, export and tourist centre and being geographically attached to France.

FC Barcelona will contribute 30,000 euros to subsidise part of the cost of extending the metro’s operational hours in order to guarantee public transport to and from the Camp Nou for the Spanish Super Cup featuring Barça and Atlético Madrid. The football match will start at 11pm on Wednesday 28th August and will not finish until 1am. Barcelona’s underground transportation ends at midnight on weeknights and the Mayor had requested the Spanish Football federation (RFFE) to reschedule the match to an earlier time. However the RFFE refused and Barcelona’s Mayor, Xavier Trias, warned that they would not prolong the metro’s operational hours, with each extra hour costing around 30,000 euros.

Container exports from the Port of Barcelona reached 276,566 TEU’s for the first half of this year, an increase of 12% on the same period of 2012. North Africa and the Far East have significantly grown as the destinations of exports from the Catalan harbour. Furthermore, among the highest exports are motor vehicles and bulk solid cargo such as cement. The Catalan Minister of Planning and Sustainability, Santi Vila, stressed the importance of the Port as an economic engine and the fact that it has changed itself from being an importer to an exporter of goods in recent years.

The Catalan capital will host the certification and inspection lab that the China Certification & Inspection Group (CCIC) will base in Europe to analyse and validate the products that the Asian giant imports. The Chinese company will initially invest €2 million in its Barcelona centre, which will be built in the Zona Franca industrial and business district, located next to the city’s port and airport. The CCIC carries out the inspection, verification and certification of foreign products entering the Chinese market. The news was confirmed on Tuesday by the CCIC’s President, Zhan Li Qiang, in a meeting in Beijing with a business delegation from the Barcelona City Council. A year ago, the Mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias, met the CCIC in Hong Kong.

The Italian ferry company has built a 63,000 square metre terminal at the Costa dock, with an investment of €20 million and a capacity of 3,600 passengers per day. The new terminal will allow the city of Barcelona to gain a new urban area, since the space accessing and surrounding the terminal will be integrated into the city for the first time. Urban planning work will be concluded by the end of the year, announced the Mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias. The terminal has restaurants, bars, shops and free Wi-fi, and will allow the boarding of passengers and goods.

France will not allow High-Speed Trains from Barcelona to Central and Northern Europe to run at their maximum velocity since it refuses to build the 156 kilometre high-speed railway stretch between Perpignan and Montpellier. This infrastructure has been declared to be one of the European Union’s strategic transport priorities, since it connects the Iberian Peninsula with the rest of the continent via the Mediterranean Railway Corridor. Many years ago, the French Government promised to build this stretch before 2020, an engagement reconfirmed by Sarkozy’s executive. However, the current Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has paused work on the project and delayed it until after 2030.

Passenger traffic from the Catalan capital’s harbour increased by 18% in the period from January to March, and that of cruise passengers grew by 40%. In total, 9.8 million tonnes of goods were transported through the Port of Barcelona. The tonnes of goods transported via container increased by 0.8%. Regarding the transport of cars, which is one of the harbour’s main activities, 164,452 car units were transported through the port, a 1% increase compared to last year.

Tradebe’s new terminal for petrochemical products has 29 tanks for storing bulk liquids, with a total capacity of 450,000 cubic metres. The new facility represented a €65 million investment, occupying 60,000 square metres and creating 27 direct jobs. Tradebe is one of the leading companies in industrial waste management in Spain, with a significant presence in the United States and the United Kingdom as well as having subsidiary companies in France and Turkey. The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, and the Spanish Minister for Public Works, Ana Pastor, participated in the unveiling ceremony. Mas asked Pastor to prioritise “productive” investments, such as Barcelona Port’s railway connections.

Tarragona’s intermodal freight station is located within the Bayer factory and it will serve all the companies located in the southern half of the chemical centre. Tarragona is host to Spain’s largest chemical hub, which will be connected by international-standard width railway to Central and Northern Europe once the Spanish Government has built the stretch between this economic centre and Greater Barcelona. This stretch is part of the strategic Mediterranean Railway Corridor, which the Spanish Government has been delaying for years. This main infrastructure will combine a high-speed passenger railway with goods transportation. Once completed, it will connect Gibraltar with Northern Europe via Spain’s Mediterranean ports and industrial centres, including València, Tarragona and Barcelona.

The Port of Barcelona, one of southern Europe’s main transport infrastructures, continues to bring positive results. Over the last year the Catalan harbour unveiled two new container terminals, an investment to consolidate the trend of attracting greater container traffic, as the 8.7% increase shows. In addition, the number of cars transported increased by 9.8%. These figures are to be added to the 12% increase in container exports and 25% growth of car exports through Barcelona’s harbour in 2011. Besides, the port in the capital of Catalonia continues to lead the cruise ship sector in Europe, transporting 2.4 million passengers and almost reaching last year’s record high of 2.6 million cruisers.

The chemical industries based in Tarragona, such as BASF, Dow Chemical and Repsol, expect their turnover to increase by 4% in 2012 compared to a year ago. In 2011, they exported 60% of their production, while in 2000 they were only exporting 30% of it. Furthermore, they have requested transport infrastructures to be improved and criticised the increase in energy taxes. About Catalonia’s hypothetical independence, they stated they “will respect what will be decided and will adapt to it”. These companies represent around 7% of Catalonia’s GDP.

The Catalan capital hosts the largest and most modern container terminal of the Mediterranean Sea, a true gate for cargo ships, linking Europe with the Middle East, Northern Africa and Asia. BEST, which stands for Barcelona Europe South Terminal, represents a €515 million investment by Hutchison Port Holdings (HPH). This week it has unveiled the first part of the project: 100 hectares to store containers, 1.5 kilometres of docking space for cargo ships, 98 cranes and a provisional international-width railway connection to compete with northern European harbours. However, the Spanish Government has not started the definitive railway connection yet, despite many promises.

The Mayor of Barcelona welcomed the company’s investments and commitment to efficiency at the Port of Barcelona. The Catalan harbour is significantly increasing its container traffic in the last few years. Barcelona’s Port aims to become the main logistical hub in Southern Europe, using the international standard rail gauge to directly connect to Central Europe and new freight terminals. The Catalan company TCB is expanding its freight railway station and its power substation, as well as enlarging the ship docking space. The improvements will increase the maximum number of shipping containers transported by TCB from 0.9 million to 2.3 million by the end of 2013.

Barcelona’s Metropolitan Taxi Institute (IMET) will apply a flat rate from next year, which could be set at €15 for trips from or to El Prat Airport. The measure would only apply to taxis belonging to Barcelona and its metropolitan area. Beyond searching for “short term” measures to adapt the taxi sector to a drop of about 40% in demand because of the crisis, the IMET, along with the taxi organisations, are working to get back into the market.