Transport transition in Catalonia and the Iberian Peninsula
S. Montero
Abstract
Louis Armand, in 1962, said that the railway was an invention of the 19th century, that it had to make efforts to survive during the 20th century and that it would become essential in the 21st century. Indeed, today the interoperability of the railway is already the main link of intermodality with roads and other European means of transport.
The main reason for this success is that the train is, after the ship, the most efficient passenger and goods transport system. The reason is clear: it consumes between 4 and 10 times less energy than the plane or the road for each passenger-km or tonne-km transported. In addition, the driving energy of the train is already decarbonizing.
Since 1970, when the Club of Rome and the Meadows couple said in the "limits to growth" we believed that the combustion gases of certain hydrocarbons were the main cause of the greenhouse effect. Today, global public opinion has internalized that climate change threatens human life on earth. It is also possible that Armand read it from Fourier, Tyndall or Arrenius who discovered it earlier.
However, transport by road, ship and plane produces 38% of the gases, while the train produces 1% which will be zero when the electricity is clean. Start now, the electrification of cars, trucks and airplanes as far as possible. And in parallel, also as far as possible, the transition of all transport towards train and ship, which consume less energy per tonne-km transported.
We don't have the crystal ball to know what will happen. But today it seems clear that synthetic fuels will be expensive and scarce. Therefore, they will be reserved for vehicles with no alternative. It also seems that hydrogen will be suitable for use in high temperature combustions. And it also seems that clean renewable energies have a future.
For all this, the European Union has published between 1992 and 2016, four Packages of Railway Directives that represent a revolution in European transport. They have been discussed in Europe but ignored in Spain. Now they are being activated, something that takes the Iberian railway on a counter foot. This essay analyzes what is happening and gives ideas for integrating the railway in Europe.
These ideas are an extension of the work that the author, together with the Road Engineer Carles Viader Soler, carried out in 2020 with the title "Ideas for the rail transition in Catalonia" which was awarded the 2022 Miquel Biada Prize to the best work on infrastructures in the 2021-2022 biennium instituted by the Catalan Society of Economics and supported by the Institute of Catalan Studies.
The transport transition that Catalonia must make will be complex, as geographically it will be the main hub between the Iberian Peninsula and Europe. But in addition, sector-wise it must coordinate with the road, navigation and aviation. All of this requires a global vision that is largely already initiated in the aforementioned work.
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