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Perspectives of territorial development linked to the future high-performance rail lines in Eastern
Andalusia.

Figure 6. High Speed Rail lines proposed in the Regional Territorial Plan of Andalusia.
Source: COPT (2006)

However this ambitious scenario is going to be framed by the Trans-European Network Transport
(TEN-T), established in the nineties but deeply revised and last defined in 2013. In this area
the network is constituted by the European Mediterranean Corridor in its two lines: one inland,
Algeciras – Bobadilla –Madrid – Zaragoza – Tarragona, and another with two sections, first inland
Sevilla – Bobadilla – Almeria, then coastal to Murcia and Tarragona – Barcelona to connect
with the French border at Portbou (Ministerio de Fomento, 2015). The natural course of the
second line of the Corridor should have been all littoral from Almeria to Algeciras, according
to the proposed connections of the national and regional infrastructure plans. However the
topographical difficulties of the Andalusian Mediterranean coast imposed the longer inland
route (more than 200Km) of the Corridor. See Figure 1.

The actions planned for this transport corridor are going to set a more realistic first scenario,
thus these actions should be in service, according to the European directive, by 2030 (CFV,2016),
however the current projects and works, which are financed by European funds, should be
finished by the end of 2023, matching the final year scenario of the contemporary national
infrastructure plan (2024). Thus the actions of the European Mediterranean Corridor will help
to define the considered intermediate scenario (2030), and the rest of the lines studied and
proposed at the national infrastructure plan could be considered for a distant scenario (2050).

The Mediterranean Corridor has a high strategic importance for Andalusia, because it connects
the region with the more economically dynamic areas of the country and with the rest of
Europe, where great transport demands for both passenger and freight are produced. Thanks to
this the whole rail infrastructure from the French border to Almeria is being improved and from

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 335