The first high-speed line in Asturias that opens this Wednesday will connect Madrid with Oviedo in less than three hours in its final phase, when Renfe receives the Avril trains from Talgo, thanks to the new Pajares Variant, an infrastructure that arrives later of 19 years of works and an investment that reaches 4,000 million euros.
Specifically, Renfe will begin this Thursday the first commercial operations on this route with at least three daily circulations, a fourth from Monday to Saturday and an additional one on Fridays in the Madrid-Gijón direction. In the opposite direction there will be a sixth service, all with Alvia and Intercity trains (in no case will they be AVE since they have to change track gauge).
The high speed will run from Madrid to Pola de Lena (the first stop already in Asturian territory), with stops in Segovia, Valladolid, Palencia and León. Beyond Pola de Lena it will stop in Mieres, Oviedo and finally in Gijón, although it will no longer be high speed, but will share the track with the Cercanías trains.
Therefore, in the first phase, from Madrid to Oviedo it will take between 3 hours 39 minutes and 3 hours 58 minutes, depending on the number of stops. However, when Renfe finally receives the new Avril trains from Talgo, it will be cut to 2 hours 43 minutes, compared to the 4 hours 28 minutes that this route currently takes.
The infrastructure that will allow this new milestone in the country’s railway history is the new Pajares Bypass, a 50-kilometer-long section, of which 80% runs in tunnels, and in which up to 4,000 people have come to work. the time.
Work began in 2004 and, despite its opening scheduled for 2010, the geological and morphological complexity of the mountain massif it crosses has caused a delay of up to 13 years. In fact, one of the 12 tunnels it has will be 25 kilometers long, making it the seventh longest in the world.
The depth at which this tunnel runs, which is longer than the island of Manhattan, reaches 1 kilometer, which is equivalent to the height of the Four Towers of Madrid, one on top of the other, or the Burj Khalifa skyscraper.
The original infrastructure was inaugurated on August 15, 1884 by Kings Alfonso XII and María Cristina and, although it has become obsolete, it was still used. The new Variant will cut travel time between the capital and the region with current trains by more than an hour.
The country’s main construction companies have participated in the construction of this work, such as Acciona, ACS, FCC, Ferrovial, Sacyr or San José, or in addition to others such as Azvi, Copcisa, Asch, Comsa or Sando.
The inaugural trip, which departed from Chamartín around 1:30 p.m., was attended by King Felipe VI, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, the new Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, and the presidents of Asturias and Castilla. and León, Adrián Barbón and Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, respectively