Page 488 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Andersen, Sven

Figure 5 explains the situation for the Madrid - Valencia resp Alacant AVE line. If a nonstop
travel time of 101 min is utilized for a nonstop travel time Madrid - Valencia an Alvia train path
Madrid - Alacant may be scheduled exactly between two nonstop train paths Madrid - Valencia
running in a space of 30 min to each other, if the Alvia train leaves the main AVE line at the
junction splitting off to Alacant. But when the author travelled on 2016-04-21 with AVE train
5141 from Valencia (14.10) to Madrid (15.45) the travel time amounted to only 95 min. The train
was absolute punctually. The presented train diagram situation may therefore be checked by
RENFE again, if the in figure 5 described situation works, given a nonstop travel time Madrid -
Valencia of 95 min.
Figure 5. Train diagram study for AVE line Madrid - Valencia resp. Alacant

Avant trains
The idea of running Avant trains (classes 104 and 114) with a maximum speed of only 250 km/h
on AVE-Lines with a speed of 300 km/h, because there is surplus capacity (via libre special issue
“25 years of Spanish high speed rail”, page 58) is a wrong conclusion. As already mentioned
on page 2 it must always be a goal to run trains on parallel train paths in order to reach a high
use to capacity. The demand for absolute parallel train paths refers also to the daily operations
control. It is much easier to carry out operations control with trains running the same speed
rather than with different speeds. Therefore it shall be checked, if the present Avant services
Puertollano - Madrid, Toledo - Madrid and Sevilla - Málaga can be integrated in an economic
manner in the rolling stock roster for the 300 km/h fast EMU’s. For this see topics 3.10.4 and
3.10.5.

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