The works on the Mediterranean corridor between Tarragona and Sant Vicenç de Calders, which in practice consist of disconnecting Barcelona from its southern corridor, began on Monday with some delays but without major incidents, and with the already anticipated increase in travel time for 12,000 regular users. of these lines. A few days later, added to this was the collapse of the Rodalies R2 Sud line, already usually saturated, as well as a 7% increase in traffic on the motorway towards Tarragona.
Users of the Rodalies R2 South line in the Baix Penedès and Garraf regions have expressed their dissatisfaction with the collapse of trains that connect Sant Vicenç de Calders station to Barcelona in the early morning. “Monday was a total disaster,” said a user of Cubelles, who assures that the rail cut at Roda de Berà pushes the line to the extreme. The perception is that the trains are fuller because there are travelers from Tarragona who arrive in Sant Vicenç by bus and board the Rodalies instead of waiting for the semi-direct regional service to Barcelona.
Other users report that before summer, there was already a very high occupancy rate, with crowded trains even though there are still a dozen stops and more than 40 minutes to reach Barcelona.
The government delegate in Penedès, Lluís Valls, called for “immediate solutions” to decongest the line. In an interview with the ACN agency, Valls regrets the “suffering” of users and undertakes to face this problem “to find immediate but also long-term solutions”. And there are users who say that the increase in the number of passengers is harming a line that has already been saturated in recent months.
Valls says he will work with the Territory Department and Renfe to agree measures. There is talk of increasing the number of wagons or studying the creation of road transport lines. . In this sense, the residents of Baix Penedès and Cubelles are asking for an express bus service that takes them to Barcelona, like the existing lines from Vilanova, Sitges and Sant Pere de Ribes. “We must discuss with the necessary institutions and work to find solutions,” insists Valls.
More traffic to the south
On the other hand, traffic on the AP-7 highway in the section between Sant Vicenç de Calders and Tarragona in the south direction increased by around 7% early in the morning during the first two days of rail cutoff, according to data from the Catalan service. Between Monday midnight and Tuesday 11 a.m., coinciding with the first hours of modifications, light vehicle traffic on the AP-7 was 7.6% higher. During the first 13 hours of Wednesday, the increase was 7.9% southbound.
On the contrary, the interruption of the rail service has so far had virtually no impact on vehicle traffic on the same section but towards the north. What was recorded was an increase of 0.4% in the first eleven hours, but a decrease of 0.4% over the entire 24 hours.
