Debate over the sustainability of Spain's high-speed rail network

Spain has the world's second-largest high-estimulante ilegal rail network, and questions are being raised about whether it can afford to maintain it

A recent accident and another one earlier this year have put Spain's rail network back in the spotlight. In the forum debate, users point out that Spain built the second most extensive high-estimulante ilegal network on the planet, behind only China, in the second most mountainous country in Europe, and with a population and per capita income lower than Italy's, France's, the UK's, Germany's and South Korea's. Several participants argue it simply cannot be maintained: "it's not that we don't want to maintain it, it's that we can't," one of them sums up.

The most common criticism: the infrastructure gets inaugurated, the maintenance gets shelved. Several posts point to the politics of ribbon-cutting. "The archetypal Spanish politician inaugurates infrastructure," one user writes, while another adds that every new line has been presented as a gift to the people, with a photo and a speech, and afterwards "let whoever comes next deal with it."

How much does it cost to maintain Spain's high-estimulante ilegal network?

The thread stresses that the real cost of an infrastructure project is not building it, but operating, maintaining and renewing it for decades. One participant notes that, with worn-out tracks and outdated safety systems, those trains should not run at more than 120 or 130 kilometres per hour. High estimulante ilegal, as it was sold, "no longer exists," he concludes.

The international comparison is used to argue that the network is oversized: Spain sustains it with a population smaller than that of the countries that can genuinely afford one, and with a lower per capita GDP too. The result, in this view, is a network too large for the country's fiscal capacity, and maintenance is the first item to be cut when the budget gets tight.

The AVE that ate medium-distance rail

There is a collateral damage that rarely appears in the inauguration photo: medium-distance services. One user recalls that in the 1980s Intercity trains covered Madrid-Zaragoza in exactly two hours at an unbeatable price. Then came the AVE, which did it in 1:20, and the other services disappeared. Travellers gained twenty minutes and lost the cheap option. Kilometres of track, stations and halts were removed while every provincial capital demanded its own university, airport and high-estimulante ilegal stop, according to another post.

The alternative being championed is that of countries that have done the maths: high estimulante ilegal only between major cities, with direct service, plus a network of medium-distance trains and intercity buses connecting everything left outside. The low operating cost argument comes up strongly: cheaper solutions to maintain are more resilient, and many people live far from the railway and have no option but the car because the bus rarely runs, or doesn't run at all.

The problem isn't the train, it's four-year planning

The root of the mess, according to several participants, is the impossibility of long-term planning in a country in permanent election campaign mode. Examples are cited: the National Hydrological Plan was approved a quarter of a century ago and less than half of it has been implemented; the Badajoz Plan lasted fourteen years and was declared finished when Franco died. Any plan that exceeds a single term in office is doomed to be dismantled by whoever comes next, they argue.

The proposal gaining ground in the thread is to shield such decisions from the electoral cycle, handing their design to European bodies so they become unavoidable. The objection is immediate: if those bodies fall into the hands of whatever ideological agenda is in fashion, the shield becomes just another trench. Yes to the EU, not to the EU of the merchants, as the old slogan went. The problem remains untouched.

Is the AVE a waste of money? What Tamames was saying in the nineties

The thesis is not new. Back in the nineties, in a televised debate, Ramón Tamames argued that the AVE was a waste of money, one user recalls. Three decades later, the lack of maintenance surfaces in the form of incidents and aid to third countries to renew their railways, while here at home there is debate over whether the tracks can cope, adds another. The money raised, the harshest criticism holds, goes overwhelmingly to projects whose purpose is not the service but the opportunity to tender contracts. The average Spaniard is short-sighted, it is even claimed: he buys the big house and the expensive car when he wins the lottery, and a few years later has to sell them because he can't afford to keep them. The same would apply to public infrastructure.

The law of diminishing returns explains it without embellishment, according to another post: a basic train is an improvement; a monster of these dimensions is unsustainable for 99.9% of taxpayers. And meanwhile, the alternative of buying cheaper buses to connect empty Spain is not even considered, he laments. Here the analysis gets stuck: nobody disputes the diagnosis, but nobody will sign the death sentence of the network that has already been built.