The first peninsular railway He turned 175 last Saturday. The layout, converted into the R1 by Rodalies, which connects Molins de Rei and Maçanet-Massanes, has important challenges ahead. As several experts detailed to EL PERIÓDICO, it would be about responding more efficiently to the incidentsto ensure that the climate change do not take away the infrastructure and ensure that the line expand your offer. In other words, there are fewer breakdowns, it is protected from increasingly frequent and virulent storms and it can transport more passengers. All of this is attempted to be captured in one way or another in the Rodalies plan 2021-2030. In the list that follows, and by the hand of Pere Maciasresponsible for said roadmap, we will try to explain what the main projects aimed at improving and expanding the service of the veteran coastline.
One of the works that is already being carried out, worth 70 million euros, is the installation of the ERTMS security system (European Rail Traffic Management System) between Mataró and Sants station from Barcelona. It is, according to Macias, “the most significant“of everything that is planned for this decade in the R1 of Rodalies. Because “will maximize the capacity of trains and will improve safety standards“. This technology allows us to go from the classic traffic lights and vertical signals to constant control of the train’s location from an operations center.
With the old system, the route is divided into cantons. Each of them has its own signal system that regulates its circulation, so that a train cannot enter the section if another convoy is traveling along it. With ERTMS, which is the one used in high speed, “the limits are not physical, but virtual”that is, what is done is to preserve, via geolocationa constant distance between the trains, in such a way, points out the person responsible for the Rodalies plan, “that the braking safety distance“. The stretch Mataró-Maçanet It is planned to have ERTMS later, sometime between 2025 and 2030.
Longer platforms at Arc de Triomf
On April 3, work began to expand the platforms of the Arc de Triomf stationa project of about three million euros that seems like a small thing but will allow the R1 to circulate double composition trainsthat is, up to 200 meters, increasing the capacity to transport passengers. The work should be completed in early 2024.
This fundamental work takes almost 15 years in the to-do drawer of Adif, which has finally undertaken it after a first public contest which in 2017 won a company that, after making a reckless offer down, he could not take charge of the work. Once completed, the capacity of the trains may be increased by up to 30%, since a train made up of two five-car Civia units (wagons) is 200 meters long and can transport almost 2,000 people.
Discarded for now splitting of the road between Arenys and Blanesa project debated ad nauseam, there is a planned work that may seem like a patch but which, according to Macias, is “fundamental to improve the line performance“. This is the enabling of a second track at the Tordera station, a project that will allow trains to cross “so that the canton (remember, the railway safety sections) between Blanes and Maçanet is larger. It is planned undertake it between 2025 and 2030 and will cost between four and six million euros. Once finished, Macias maintains, they can be put more trains in circulation.
New Mataró station
The Rodalies plan presented at the end of 2020 did not contemplate this work, but it has finally been incorporated. It’s about the renovation of the Mataró station which should allow a better train management who are already returning to Barcelona from the capital of Maresme and those who continue their path to the end of the line. “We will do the same thing that is being done in Castelldefels – Macias details – so that the passing tracks are the ones at the ends, and those of the trains that remain, the central ones. “For now the project is being draftedso that it can be undertaken between 2026 and 2030.
It is also planned to create a new access to the station on the side closest to the university (the TecnoCampus), so that the students have the train closer at hand. Likewise, the plan assumes two new underpasses to achieve greater capillarity between the municipality and the port and the promenade. All, for a figure close to 70 million euros.
Urban integration of Sant Feliu
It is not a work that is specifically going to improve the efficiency of the Rodalies R1 linebut it is a good example of correcting a historical grievance. In this case, the one who suffers residents of Sant Feliu de Llobregatwhere the railroad tracks continue to pass through the urban core. The project started in mid-2021 and should be a reality at the end of 2026. Also circulating here are: R4 trains (Sant Vicenç de Calders-Manresa).
The investment exceeds 120 million euros. The project, which came after 40 years of neighborhood strugglewill increase the security conditions for the neighbors and the railway operation, level crossing eliminated in an area with a high density of vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The elimination of the railway gap will open a long walk along which will extend the tram line which now dies next to the Regional Council, at the gates of Sant Feliu.
In addition to these actions, the Rodalies plan contemplates the remodeling of the Molins de Rei, Ocata and Blanes stations (works in progress worth about 11 million euros); the sectorization of platforms at the Plaça de Catalunya stop (project being drafted) or the Sants 4+4 configuration, which for nine million allows for greater efficiency in what until now is the largest railway station in the Catalan capital. Until the arrival Sagreraanother tough bone in the Catalan railway roadmap.