M II A II R II K
Senior Member
Barcelona’s Metro Continues Its Expansion at a Relatively Cheap Price
June 29th, 2010
Yonah Freemark
Read More: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/...es-its-expansion-at-a-relatively-cheap-price/
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Over the next ten years, New York, Los Angeles, and Barcelona each hope to have new underground rapid transit lines up and running. Gotham will spend $4.5 billion on a 1.7-mile line under Second Avenue. Los Angeles will get a 8.6-mile extension to the Westside for $6 billion. And Barcelona will have built 30 miles of automated subways for €6.5 billion ($7.9 billion according to today’s exchange rate). Perhaps it’s an unfair comparison: Spain has lower labor costs, and despite Barcelona’s international prestige and high densities, land values there are generally lower than in the two American metropolises. But the disparity in infrastructure creation remains dramatic; countries like Spain and China are able to build far more than American cities can even dream about.
Barcelona’s newest exploit was the opening last week of the first shared segment of the L9 and L10 lines. Both are being constructed as part of a unified program that will increase the metro system’s size by a third, providing a new north-south circumferential corridor west of the city center, access to northern neighborhoods, a connection to the new high-speed rail station at La Sagrera, and direct links to both the airport and the port to the south. The first segment of L9 opened in December 2009 and the first section of L10 in April this year. The southern links will be completed in 2012, with the full program in service in 2014. That’s six years after the project was originally expected to be done.
Though Barcelona’s project doesn’t come close to the scale of Madrid’s metro expansion program — that city increased the size of its network by more than 100 miles between 1995 and 2007 and now has the highest metro route miles per person in the world — Barcelona will have Europe’s longest underground route and the continent’s most extensive automated line in four years.
For €6.5 billion, the city will be getting 52 stations, 20 of which will include transfers; the project is expected to attract 350,000 daily riders. Because of Barcelona’s already very dense metro network, the line has been built below everything else. Tunnel boring machines, which Spain specializes in, were used for the entire underground path (the line includes a few miles above ground on viaducts); this decreased costs by limiting surface cuts and land purchasing. The city also has taken advantage of the line’s building to produce some very interesting street reconstructions.
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June 29th, 2010
Yonah Freemark
![New-Logo.jpg](http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/wp-content/themes/atahualpa/images/New-Logo.jpg)
Read More: http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/...es-its-expansion-at-a-relatively-cheap-price/
#############################################
Over the next ten years, New York, Los Angeles, and Barcelona each hope to have new underground rapid transit lines up and running. Gotham will spend $4.5 billion on a 1.7-mile line under Second Avenue. Los Angeles will get a 8.6-mile extension to the Westside for $6 billion. And Barcelona will have built 30 miles of automated subways for €6.5 billion ($7.9 billion according to today’s exchange rate). Perhaps it’s an unfair comparison: Spain has lower labor costs, and despite Barcelona’s international prestige and high densities, land values there are generally lower than in the two American metropolises. But the disparity in infrastructure creation remains dramatic; countries like Spain and China are able to build far more than American cities can even dream about.
Barcelona’s newest exploit was the opening last week of the first shared segment of the L9 and L10 lines. Both are being constructed as part of a unified program that will increase the metro system’s size by a third, providing a new north-south circumferential corridor west of the city center, access to northern neighborhoods, a connection to the new high-speed rail station at La Sagrera, and direct links to both the airport and the port to the south. The first segment of L9 opened in December 2009 and the first section of L10 in April this year. The southern links will be completed in 2012, with the full program in service in 2014. That’s six years after the project was originally expected to be done.
Though Barcelona’s project doesn’t come close to the scale of Madrid’s metro expansion program — that city increased the size of its network by more than 100 miles between 1995 and 2007 and now has the highest metro route miles per person in the world — Barcelona will have Europe’s longest underground route and the continent’s most extensive automated line in four years.
For €6.5 billion, the city will be getting 52 stations, 20 of which will include transfers; the project is expected to attract 350,000 daily riders. Because of Barcelona’s already very dense metro network, the line has been built below everything else. Tunnel boring machines, which Spain specializes in, were used for the entire underground path (the line includes a few miles above ground on viaducts); this decreased costs by limiting surface cuts and land purchasing. The city also has taken advantage of the line’s building to produce some very interesting street reconstructions.
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![Barcelona-Line-9-Tunnel.png](http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Barcelona-Line-9-Tunnel.png)