Spanish High Speed Rail Crushing Air Travel
The Guardian reports that Spain’s new high speed trains have stolen hundreds of thousands of passengers from that country’s airlines over the past year. Passenger numbers on Spanish domestic flights fell 20%, while high speed rail ridership was up 28% over the same period.
Similar to the U.S., Spain’s major cities are widely spread out. However, in contrast to America, Spain has substantially built-up its high speed rail infrastructure over the past decades. Its most recent success story is the opening in February of a high speed line between Madrid and Barcelona that takes only 2 hours 35 minutes to travel the nearly 400 mile route.
Spanish Prime Minister José Zapatero has plans to invest almost $150 billion in that country’s high speed rail network through 2020.
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