In the absence of authorization from Adif and the Railway Safety Agency, the railway company runs daily, first thing in the morning and in the afternoon, with 509 seats per train.
The general director of this subsidiary of the national railway company of France (SNCF), Helene Valenzuela, held a meeting this Thursday with the mayor of Valladolid, Jesús Julio Carnero, in which he explained the Ouigo project for connections between Madrid and the capital of Valladolid. It is a project that, according to Valenzuela, the company is facing with great enthusiasm, it will be the first line on which Ouigo operates in the north of Spain, and they hope that the trains will be able to operate in the summer of 2024.
The company has informed the mayor that it has already requested a capacity study from Adif to operate the line that will connect the Chamartín-Clara Campoamor station in Madrid with Segovia and Valladolid and is awaiting a response from the infrastructure manager, which they hope will be positive and that it will allow it to start operating on the scheduled dates, approximately within a year.
The proposal is to launch two daily round-trip frequencies between Madrid, Segovia and Valladolid with the largest capacity trains on the market, with 509 seats in a single unit (1,018 in a multiple unit), which will mean more than 14,000 weekly seats on the Madrid-Segovia-Valladolid line with tickets starting at 9 euros, will be free for children up to 3 years of age and include a flat rate of 5 euros for children between 4 and 13 years
In general terms, it is estimated that tickets with Ouigo are 50 percent cheaper than with Renfe’s high-speed trains. Valenzuela has specified that trains are expected to start up early in the morning from Madrid and Valladolid and the second frequency would be “late in the afternoon.” At the moment, as Jesús Julio Carnero has added, it is the “starting point” of Ouigo in Valladolid, but he is confident that if the work of his team in promoting tourism in the city is adequate in the future, more daily trains can be added.
In addition, Valenzuela and Carnero have pointed out that the French capital company is also working to connect these trains with those of the Madrid-Alicante line, which would give “greater operation”. The general director of Ouigo has qualified that the railway sector is “very technical” and this process to receive the authorization takes several months, since she has exemplified that a train “is not like a bus, which with the driver’s license is valid to drive throughout Spain and even throughout Europe”.
In the case of the railway, the company has already begun to work on the training of train drivers for this line, since they must have a certificate, in the homologation of the trains, which requires tests of “compatibility with the line” and also require the formal authorization of the State Agency for Railway Safety, something that they expect to receive before the summer of next year. “That’s why we can’t start earlier,” Valenzuela specified.
The Ouigo company, as it has been highlighted, has an expansion plan underway in Spain, with an investment of 700 million euros that in 2024 will also take its trips to Murcia, Malaga and Seville. The Valladolid councilor has stressed that the foreseeable arrival of ‘low cost’ trains from Ouigo to Valladolid will be “fundamental” to increase the frequency of trains that connect the city with Madrid and to lower the price of tickets. In this way, on each route there will be 500 more places that will allow Valladolid people to carry out their work activity in Madrid and also be able to attract “a lot of tourism” to the city and its surroundings, “with very competitive prices”.
The Renfe Avlo
Carnero has insisted that “high speed is the suburbs of Valladolid” from the labor, social, institutional point of view and also for tourism and for commercial relations with a city like Madrid, which presents a notable “concentration of people and interests such as the capital of Spain”.
On the other hand, Carnero has mentioned the “contradictory” news that have been published in recent days about the ‘low cost’ of Renfe, AVLO, about which he has trusted that they will also end up being “a real possibility” and, in fact, he has stated that he trusts to be able to hold talks with the public rail operator in the coming weeks.