SPAIN, Portugal, and the European Commission (EC) have struck a deal for a high-speed train link between Madrid and Lisbon to launch by 2034 with a journey time of just three hours.
A ‘conventional’ five-hour link between the two capitals will start by 2030.
The project will see the construction of a high-speed line linking the Portuguese cities of Lisbon and Evora and creating a second one between Evora and Caia if required.
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A bridge will also need to be constructed over the River Tajo.
The 600-kilometre journey currently takes almost nine hours or more and requires at least two train changes.
The Portuguese Ministry of Infrastructure said such a link represents a ‘more competitive’ alternative both from the point of view of cost and convenience for passengers who currently take use over 40 daily flights between the capitals.
“Such links make train travel a genuinely attractive and sustainable alternative for city-to-city journeys,” Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the EU’s transport commissioner, said in a statement.
The Lisbon-Madrid route is regarded as the missing link of what the EU calls its ‘Atlantic Corridor’, designed to offer fast connections between the Iberian Peninsula and major cities in France and Germany.
The project, which has already got nearly €1 billion in EU funding is part of the zone’s initiative to get plane passengers onto trains.
The EC indicated, for its part, that this initiative ‘will strengthen competitiveness’ in long-distance passenger traffic.
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