(15/10/2014)  Organised by the Aragon Government and the Spanish Confederation of Employers' Organizations (Confederación Española de Organizaciones Empresariales, CEOE), the conference had the participation of representatives from sectoral business organizations such as construction, logistics and food and metallurgical industries as well as territorial organizations like the ones in Andalusia, Castilla y León, Aragon, Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha and Madrid, and companies from various segments of activity.

Study data were provided at the conference according to which the Central Pyrenees Crossing would have an immediate effect on Spain’s global competitiveness, therefore boosting exports and reducing logistic and transport costs. The contribution of that increase in competitiveness to the GDP was valued at 1,178 million euros per year excluding exports.

This railway axle, which would link Europe through the Pyrenees with Zaragoza, Madrid, Algeciras and the Portuguese port Sines on an inverted y-shaped layout, is the axle known in the EU’s nomenclature as Trans-European Axle 16. The Axle was included as a priority project on the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) between 2004 and 2011, it passed the information study phase and ten possible routes were evaluated.

Costs

The participants highlighted the fact that the Central Pyrenees Crossing would have less implementation and commissioning costs than other corridors significantly more saturated to which it would complement and, in addition, its network effect would spread across a broad area of the Iberian Peninsula. At present 75% of the axle’s route is already in service.

The estimate provided at the conference on the axle’s transport capacity was valued at 30 million tonnes a year, with a time horizon for its commissioning set between 2002 and 2025.

A rough approximation places the budget for the Axle on 15,000 million euros, from which 10,000 million euros would be destined for the construction of a 30 km low level tunnel in the Aragonese Pyrenees while the remaining 5,000 million euros would be used for adapting around 1,500 kilometres of existing lines to freight traffic.