Spain quadruples bullet trains in 3 years and leads advance – 04/11/2024 – Market

Spain has quadrupled its supply of high-speed trains, which travel at up to 310 km/h, in the last three years and has led Europe in this area of ​​transport.

Since 2021, when the European Union approved a railway package forcing countries to open their national markets to competition, three new bullet train companies have joined the former Renfe AVE (acronym for Spanish High Speed).

Competition was intensified by the entry of French Ouigo and Italian Iryo and had a notable effect on reducing prices. A recent study by ticket sales platform Trainline highlights a 65% price drop since 2019, with the current average ticket price being around 35 euros, which is 22% less than last year. From 2021 to now, the drop was 48%.

Spanish state-owned Renfe has been operating its AVE brand since 1992, when it started a regional line between Madrid and Seville. And so it was for almost three decades, when, in 2021, the French low-cost train company Ouigo arrived in the country.

Competition forced Renfe to launch a second low-cost brand in the same year, Avlo, whose trains do not have first class and operate with prices that sometimes do not reach 10 euros. Avlo can have discounts between 60% and 90% compared to AVE on the same line.

At the end of 2022, it was Iryo’s turn, a company that has the Italian state-owned Trenitalia in its DNA. Iryo, in turn, competes directly with AVE, offering first class, meals, drinks and dining cars.

“The average ticket price fell a lot and demand grew. Demand grew precisely because of lower prices and better service, greater competition in services,” he told Sheet Antonio García Salas, from the Corredor Sudoeste Ibérico association, which brings together around 40 companies involved in the transport sector in the region.

According to Salas, there is a fifth company eyeing the Spanish market, the Portuguese company B-Rail. “Although Portugal does not yet have a bullet train, B-Rail is currently working on implementing a Lisbon-Madrid line, which will last three hours”, he says.

A Madrid-Barcelona ticket search on the Trainline platform for a normal day — for example, next Tuesday (15) — offers no less than 46 different trains between 6:15 am and 9:10 pm, with durations between two and a half hours and three hours and fifteen minutes.

The cheapest tickets started at 19 euros (R$103), with options from Avlo, at 10:30 am and 7:30 pm, or Ouigo, at 9 pm. Prices are not fixed like they used to be. Now, they follow the airlines’ scheme, whose algorithms increase and decrease prices according to the day, time, availability, etc.

Thus, the first Avlo train for that day, at 6:15 am, was much more expensive: with only six seats remaining, it cost 55 euros (R$299) at the time of the research.

But, at 6:40 am, the more luxurious Iryo charged half the price of the low-cost one: 28 euros (R$ 152) or 38 euros (R$ 207) in first class, with meal. Twenty minutes later, at 7am, AVE was asking 121 euros (R$659) for a single seat, or 143 euros (R$779) for first class.

As a comparison, the distance between the two Spanish cities (630 km) is greater than São Paulo-Rio (450 km) or São Paulo-Belo Horizonte (570 km).

“Different countries are adopting this law [de abertura à concorrência] with different levels of enthusiasm,” he told Sheet Mark Smith, expert on European railways and maintainer of the specialized website The Man in Seat 61 (www.seat61.com).

“France was forced to accept two trains a day from Spanish Renfe to Marseille and Lyon. But the French state-owned SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français) is notorious for doing everything it can to make it difficult for other operators to enter the country “, he said.

The Czech Republic and Italy, in turn, have opened themselves up to competition in a more transparent way, he says. “The old Trenitalia and the new Italo Treno now compete on the high-speed network between the main Italian cities. Poland and Slovakia have also opened their markets, but there is nothing in Switzerland, which does not belong to the EU, or in Croatia, for example,” said Smith.

The United Kingdom adopted another policy. “Instead of allowing open access operators to our entire railway network, we privatize by opening tenders for franchise contracts. Thus, competition takes place at the stage in which the government grants franchises, and not at the stage in which the passenger buys the tickets “, he stated.

For Salas, from the Corredor Sudoeste Ibérico association, another great advantage of the arrival of a greater supply of bullet trains is that they are more modern and, therefore, less polluting than the previous ones.

“In the case of the Iberian southwest, electricity production has almost zero emissions of CO2, the greenhouse gases. Extremadura, which is the Spanish region close to the border with Portugal, has a production capacity six times greater than consumption. And all with virtually no CO2 emissions. High-speed trains run on this electricity. Among others, some are electric, but many still run on diesel,” said Salas.

Last month, the idea of ​​banning flights to where there is the option of trains with a journey time of up to two and a half hours came up again in Spain. The move is part of the government’s plan to reduce carbon emissions by 2050.

The PSOE, led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, and Sumar, a left-wing coalition that is part of the government, reached an agreement in Congress to reduce these domestic flights, but most of them face the exception to the rule: as long as they are not connected to airports that connect with international routes.

In other words, Madrid-Barcelona flights, for example, cannot be interrupted because anyone who buys an international ticket in Barcelona could have to pass through Madrid to continue their journey. The government, however, is working with the possibility of extinguishing ten lines.

“People used to think three hours was the magic number,” explained Mark Smith. He refers to the fact that, for the passenger, a three-hour train journey is equivalent in time to a one-hour flight. Because you need to count half an hour going to the airport, an hour to check in, an hour to fly and another half hour from the destination airport to the center of the other city.

“But the president of the French state railway said a few years ago that the magic number of three hours was now four or even five hours because of extra check-in time and additional security after 9/11. And also because, on trains, businesspeople now have laptops, trains now have sockets and Wi-Fi, meaning time on the train is productive time, and on the flight it’s not quite like that,” said Smith.

“The danger with these government proposals is that they look good and generate positive headlines for politicians. But if you’re not careful it won’t have any effect, especially if it allows flights where you are connected to an international hub,” he said.

In fact, France banned these flights last year, but the effect was almost null for the market, as it currently applies to only three routes from Paris Orly airport to Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux.

Either way, it helps. According to the industry, aviation represents 2% percent of global CO₂ emissions. However, studies say this misses key factors. Due to high-altitude emissions during flight, the global climate impact of aviation may be responsible for 5% to 8% of the world’s emissions