Railway highway that joins Barcelona with Europe

Last Tuesday, February 19, the “railway motorway” was launched (tracks destined to the transport of goods trucks by a fixed line). It goes between Barcelona and Europe. An agreement reached by Renfe and Viia, a subsidiary of SNCF (the French railway company) makes this possible. The highway connects Can Tunís terminal, in Barcelona, ​​with Bettembourg, in Luxembourg.

The choice of Barcelona

The Can Tunís terminal in the Catalan capital stands out for its location (direct connection to the port of Barcelona), for its size (occupies 456,000 square meters) and for its facilities (it has a total of 11 tracks. Capable of loading trains of 750 meters and with a UIC gauge, the European track size).

How does it work?

This new method to transport goods from Spain, consists not on inserting the container with goods in the train but inserting the whole truck except for the cabin and the driver. And then transporting it through a high-speed railway line to points closer to its destination. Each convoy has the capacity to move a total of 1,500 tons.

What advantages does it have?

The multimodal service is foreseen to move about 20,000 semi-trailers, per year, through these routes and thus reduce their road journey. At the same time, apart from facilitating merchandise trade, it seeks to reduce road distances thus reducing CO2 emissions. It is estimated to reduce emissions by 23,000 tons, only on this line.

This transport format is new for Spain, but in Europe it has been used for a long time. In 2018 throughout Europe 106,615 were transported between semi-trailers and containers, saving about 80,000 tons of CO2 emissions.

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