Barcelona has for many years wanted a fast train connection to the airport. The project is advancing slowly, but now a projected completion date for the works has been set: next year 2022. While waiting for the infrastructure to be ready, the Government has launched the process to commission the manufacture of the electric trains that will run on this new line, called R-Aeroport, which will link terminal T-1 ---which currently has no train--- and Sant Andreu Comtal station.
The contract will have a starting value of 187 million euros and will include the construction of ten electric trains with a maximum length of one hundred meters and a capacity for 600 people; for this amount, the manufacturer must also offer a maintenance service for a period of fifteen years.
The project to improve the connectivity of Josep Tarradellas Airport with Barcelona consists of the construction of a new railway branch line that will be 4.5 kilometers long and will have two new stations located in the subsoil of terminals 1 and 2. The state infrastructure manager Adif, dependent on the Ministry of Transport, is in charge of carrying out the work.
However, this is a line that will depend on the Government of Catalonia, as it will be part of the commuter rail network. In this regard, in December 2019, the Executive Council of the Generalitat approved an agreement to commission the provision of the service to its railway operator, that is, to FGC and not to Renfe, which manages the rest of the commuter lines and claims to also take care of the airport line, since its operation must be integrated with that of the current network. Although the dispute with Renfe remains open, to reaffirm its decision, the Government has now taken a further step by commissioning the company chaired by Ricard Font to purchase the trains.
The objective of the Generalitat is for the new R-Aeroport to have a connection with Metro Line 9 and to double the current frequency of the train that currently links Sants station with T2. The idea is for the shuttle to have a frequency of one train every fifteen minutes, compared to the current 30 minutes.
FGC registered 52% fewer users in 2020
FGC has assessed the service quality indices achieved during the atypical year 2020, in which its passenger volume plummeted due to the pandemic. Specifically, demand on metropolitan lines fell by 52%, to 47.5 million users. On the Lleida-La Pobla line, the decrease has been 42%. According to the company, despite the exceptional context, the punctuality index in the metropolitan networks has stood at 99.61%, which means an improvement over the 2019 value (99.48%).