The AP-7 motorway is the backbone of the country. The other roads are limbs of a structured body. The AP-7 was designed with sufficient quality (compare it to the A-2 in Lleida) and has been a toll road for 50 years, extended by the addition of a third lane (and, consequently, by extension on the C-32). The only ministerial magnanimity was the addition of a fourth lane on the Vallès section and the removal of the Bellaterra toll, by which time more cars were already using the side lanes than the main carriageway. Today, the AP-7 serves as a major connector between the entire Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and Morocco. Heavy goods vehicles account for more than a quarter of the total traffic. Every day, the AP-7 carries up to 13,000 trucks through La Jonquera, and more than 25,000 travel along the central section in Vallès.
The promise of the Mediterranean Corridor is fiction. To reach 10% of the 13,000 trucks passing through La Jonquera daily, one train per hour in each direction would be needed. To reach 30%, three trains would be required, and even then, we wouldn't be meeting European recommendations, because the rail routes aren't complete and trucks cover a longer distance.
Shifting freight transport from trucks to rail is not a trend. For the last twenty years, the tonnage transported by rail has been declining. Meanwhile, road freight continues to increase in cumulative tonnage. Europe is calling for more rail transport, but Catalonia was better compliant with European recommendations in 2000 than it is now.
It's completely impossible that the solution will come from a Mediterranean Corridor that, for now, connects ports and the Llagosta station, currently the only intermodal freight station, almost newly built (the others are only discussed or planned). This is especially true considering that the corridor is merely a third track along the old commuter and regional lines, utilizing the high-speed rail line in some sections, but without the sidings that would allow fast trains to overtake freight trains. All of this consists of simple infrastructure options, lacking a service strategy or economic plan. Furthermore, the demand for transporting trucks (whole or with the cargo removed) to rail has never been considered. The situation is one of profound disarray, and most people are deluding themselves while celebrating the emperor's new clothes.
Catalonia is a slender trunk due to the number of leafy branches hanging off it, covering more than half of the Iberian Peninsula. This slender trunk would only function in the absence of a significant volume of freight transport. It's a major bottleneck. Luckily, then, the World Bank financed the AP-7! Today, Catalonia is what it is thanks to it. But now, clearly, this peninsular trunk needs a dedicated freight rail line (not punch to another, like the Mediterranean Corridor), with its own identity, in an investment worthy of what the AP-7 was. What would it look like? We've designed it as two tracks running parallel to the high-speed rail, with no environmental impact and separated from towns. But, apart from the infrastructure, we must consider services and mobility management.
We call AF-7 what would be a rail freight service, for example, from La Aldea to Vilamalla, on a Catalan scale, but also from Valencia to Narbonne and beyond on a European scale. What does "rail freight" mean? It means loading the entire truck onto the train, to combine the efficiency of door-to-door delivery with the productivity of rail. A further step would be to move the trailer without the cab, but we'll get there. Because anyone who thinks we'll reach European targets with just containers shipped from ports and a few sparse stations is mistaken. Logistics is sophisticated, not a simple syllogism.
We should consider transferring roughly half of the trucks currently using the AP-7 motorway to rail to make journeys more comfortable, safe, and energy-efficient. It's worth remembering that Europe has a shortage of approximately one hundred thousand truck drivers, and that rail transport adds value and boosts productivity. This target would represent about twenty trains per hour in each direction along the entire AF-7 motorway, which would crisscross the country from north to south.
This transport governance should be framed within a mobility policy that incorporates comprehensive management: economic, tariff, energy... and within that framework, the passage of trucks on highways must be charged, as Europe dictates, unlike our general free access, including for Europeans (a subsidy that is not reciprocal).
Is it acceptable that in the Barcelona metropolitan area and beyond we have to live with the current traffic on the AP-7 motorway, which is aggressive, dense and disrupts local mobility?
Spain's radial system has unified the Peninsula with highways and nationalized the radial roads around Madrid. But it fails to act equitably on the Mediterranean coast, the main freight corridor. We continue to receive the same old treatment. We expect ministerial distance, but not Catalan disregard. We must acknowledge the fiction of the corridor. We have been unable to guarantee even minimally equitable investment treatment, to make a sound claim, and to place it within the context of a national project.
And what would that project be? To establish regional high-speed rail services, like Madrid has done, which has connected the 11.6 million inhabitants of Castile and León and Castile-La Mancha to the capital. And, at the same time, to plan freight transport and the rail network for the entire country. We started talking about high-speed regional services in 2016, almost a decade ago now, and nothing has happened. Meanwhile, we're not aspiring to freight, regional services, or a properly constructed transport network (highways, railways, etc.), which would mean equal treatment, not some special privilege. In the 1960s, we hit the World Bank lottery, although we paid dearly for it: in the bank, in the construction company, in the successive concessionaires, and in taxes. And we're very good at paying! But now we need to envision a new future. This, or wait for a new ex machina springs an external source that redeems us.
