Gijón (EFE).- The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda has assured this Monday that the central government’s commitment to the Mediterranean and Atlantic Corridor is the same for both infrastructures, as demonstrated by the financing that the projects will receive to be developed in parallel.
This was confirmed this Monday by the Secretary of State for Transport, David Lucas, and the commissioner in charge of promoting the Atlantic axis, José Antonio Sebastián, in an act in Gijón attended by representatives of Asturias, Castilla y León, Extremadura, and the Canary Islands. , Galicia, the Basque Country, Navarra, Cantabria and Castilla-La Mancha, nine of the eleven affected communities (Madrid and Aragon were missing), as well as business and union leaders.
The Government of Spain has promised that the Atlantic Corridor -in which 16,000 million will be invested in the coming years- will have a master plan in October to complete and expand the network and improve rail services, in addition to boosting goods such as a fundamental axis.
Lucas highlighted that the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan is going to allocate more than 2,477 million euros to sections of the Atlantic Corridor, while in the General State Budget for this year there are 1,648 million reserved for investments, a figure similar to the one reserved for the Mediterranean.
“The Mediterranean is as important as the Atlantic,” he stated in his first act as Secretary of State.
The Atlantic Corridor has pending execution of 16,080 million, of which 12,000 are for new construction and the remaining 3,913 will be for renovations, out of a total of 49,406 million investment scheduled since 2003.
The corridor will benefit 63% of the population
“We are advancing with new proposals and making improvements to enable 63 percent of the population of Spain to benefit from the Corridor,” he stressed about an axis that has 1,533 kilometers of high-speed rail, which joins the 3,880 kilometers of conventional network and 2,644 kilometers of roads.
The Secretary of State has highlighted that the corridor will improve mobility, transport routes, create employment and allow “there to be equality and more equity between the territories”.
“With the creation of the Commissioner for the Atlantic Corridor, we seek to lead the development of this axis of the basic Trans-European Transport network that supports our autonomous communities and will reinforce the interconnection of the Iberian Peninsula, uniting Spain with France and Portugal. It has an “encompassing” character, Lucas has asserted.
The Ministry has created a permanent delegation to work with civil society and the administrations so that the master plan, which will be presented from October, incorporates all the necessary actions to complete, expand and modernize the Atlantic Corridor.
Thus, monitoring and updating of the state of the infrastructures as well as the Government’s policies in alliance with Europe will be carried out.
Incorporation of new regions
In his speech, Lucas highlighted the Ministry’s commitment to the integration of Cantabria and La Rioja into the Atlantic Corridor due to its importance for the future of the Trans-European Transport Network as the economic hub of Spain.
“From the Ministry, we have been working together with Cantabria and La Rioja for a long time and rigorously and firmly demanding before the European Commission the inclusion of the branches of their interest in this Atlantic Axis”, he assured.
In addition to incorporating new regions, the Ministry’s objective is to involve administrations and companies in the development of infrastructure.
Thus, the Secretary of State has encouraged companies and autonomous communities to convey their needs through this Commissioner, who will be in charge of listening to them with the desire to turn them into projects.
An intermodal infrastructure
For his part, the commissioner has stressed that the Atlantic axis will be “multimodal” and will connect all railway, road, port and airport infrastructures of the eleven affected communities.
“It is a trans-European dimension, not a national one. We need to help and develop the services and, for this, we will support collaboration with the companies”, he stressed after maintaining that the objective is to connect Spain in an “efficient” way with Europe and the “progressive implementation of the development of the European width”.
After arguing that it is probably “the largest infrastructure and service work in the coming years”, he has insisted that the goods will be the “fundamental axis of the actions”. EFE