With the AVE just around the corner

On November 9, there was a trip that the President of the Principality, Adrián Barbón, described as “historic”. If its duration (20 minutes) and its distance (50 kilometers) are taken in isolation, it does not seem like a great feat. But it is that it was the first route of the High Speed ​​railway in the Variante de Pajares, between La Robla (León) and the town of Campomanes in Lén. A gap that over 40 years has generated dashed hopes, enthusiastic headlines, logistical puzzles, technical disasters, budget dodges and, above all, plenty of political rows. A gap that has made communication between Asturias and the rest of Spain (particularly Madrid) difficult, with the consequent negative effect on attracting investment, retaining professionals and transporting goods. On the maiden voyage last month, Barbón assured that those 50 kilometers at 160 per hour under the Cantabrian mountain range mean “the end of the isolation” of the region.

Actually, that first journey was just a test that does not reflect what, according to the Principality, will be a reality from next May. Adif’s tests indicate that the AVE will be able to imminently reach 200 kilometers per hour and, in the future, up to 275. This will mean saving an hour of travel compared to the current route, in which the trains cross the Variant at a maximum of 80 per hour. In this way, the journey between Asturias and León, which is now done in the best of cases in two hours and 12 minutes, will last less than an hour. The trip to Madrid (four hours and 24 minutes now in the best of cases) will take around three hours, according to the Ministry of Transport.

Obviously, there is still a lot of work to be done on the Gijón-Madrid railway line. The circulation tests in the 21 kilometers that separate the city of León from La Robla have been delayed until 2023. The regional government estimated that the 31-kilometer stretch between Pola de Lena and Oviedo would be completed this year, but the project is still under supervision . And the track gauge for the 24 kilometers between Oviedo and Gijón is still under study.

In any case, and despite the fact that the first plans for the Pajares Bypass date back to 1982, the first section of the AVE on Asturian soil has been well received by Asturian society, after several decades lamenting the lack of rail connection with Castilla and León and the Spanish capital. Therefore, the majority have greeted with optimism the promise of the central government that the High Speed ​​will begin to operate commercially in May, despite the obvious coincidence with electoral dates.

The Infrastructure and Mobility Master Plan for Asturias (PIMA), prepared in 2015 with a validity until 2030 (which obviously does not include all the economic and social impact of the pandemic), estimated that, once the AVE comes into operation in its As a whole, the average number of daily trains that cross Pajares will double, going from about 30 to about 60. Likewise, the Plan, prepared by the Principality, indicated that by 2024 the steel industry could save 4 million euros and 5 million in 2030.

The calculations also included savings in coal traffic (more than one million at the end of the decade) and cereal, containers and material for the automobile industry, up to a total of 118 million euros in the year 2030. Likewise, the PIMA also made an estimate of the savings that passengers could benefit from now using planes, private cars and buses, and estimated it at around 24 million euros at the end of the decade.

The fast rail network also plans to expand horizontally. Although the national government has ruled out a Cantabrian AVE linking Galicia with the Basque Country (considering that it would not have enough demand to make it profitable), there is the possibility that Asturias will take advantage of the future fast train that, according to the Ministry of Transport, will connect Bilbao and Santander in one hour, less than half the current duration.

The current line between Oviedo and Santander is carried out by the metric gauge network (formerly Feve), with four daily frequencies, two in each direction, between the two cities. The trains take about five hours to cover the 216 kilometers of distance, at an average speed that does not reach 45 kilometers per hour. The trip from Oviedo to Bilbao (without transfers, but with a 27-minute stop in Santander) lasts 8 hours and 24 minutes, at an average of 38 kilometers per hour. Llanes will be only 101 kilometers from the future fast train.

New routes by plane

But Asturias does not only live by train. Air links with the rest of the world will also increase in spring. On April 23, Lufthansa will launch direct flights with Frankfurt and Munich, two of the main nodes in Europe. Specifically, with Frankfurt there will be three flights a week: on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. The planes will depart on Wednesdays and Fridays from the German city at 1:45 p.m. and will land in Asturias at 4:15 p.m., while they will do so five minutes earlier on Sundays. Return flights will be on Fridays and Sundays at 5:00 p.m., arriving in Frankfurt at 7:35 p.m., and five minutes later on Wednesdays.

These connections will be added in April to those that Volotea will operate to Milan-Bergamo and Lisbon, which in turn will be added to the existing ones from Brussels, Düsseldorf-Weeze, Rome-Fiumicino, Dublin, London-Stansted, London-Gatwick, Paris- Orly and Amsterdam.

Within Spain there are fifteen destinations: Alicante, Barcelona, ​​Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Ibiza, Lanzarote, Madrid, Malaga, Menorca, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Seville, Tenerife North, Tenerife South and Valencia.

In general, the figures for the Asturias airport are good. In November it registered a total of 121,334 passengers, 16.9% more than in the same month of 2019, before the pandemic, and which places last month as the best November in the last fifteen years.

During the first eleven months of the year, the number of passengers that transited through the Santiago del Monte airport amounted to 1,315,546 passengers, which represents a similar number of users compared to the same period in 2019.

Of the total number of passengers who traveled on commercial flights, 1,229,987 had their origin or destination in national territory and 81,657 had an international origin or destination.