The cities of the future look to the railway as a lever to structure their territory

"The railway is sometimes perceived as a means of transport from the 19th and 20th centuries, but it is one of the great levers of opportunity to build the city of the future." This is how the conference Railway, cities and environment began, in which consultant and Harmon partner Pau Solanilla defended that "this 19th-century technology can offer great opportunities for the 21st century."

Solanilla has participated in a round table of the conference together with the director of the Fundació Catalunya Europa, Dolors Camats; the industrial engineer and Renfe advisor in Engineering and Maintenance, Manuel Gómez Acosta, and El Periódico journalist specialized in infrastructures Cristina Buesa. In the conference, organized byThe New Barcelona Postwith the collaboration of Renfe and the Fundació Catalunya Europa, Solanilla has defended that"cities must be built on the trinomial of competitiveness, sustainability, and equity, and the railway can help to marry these elements and reconcile them in cities."And it is that, in addition to being a sustainable means of transport that allows decarbonizing displacements, also for goods, the railway increases connection to add competitiveness to the territories, and encourages the innovation ecosystem because it requires technology to insert it into smart cities.

In addition, the railway contributes to uniting cities and having "45-minute cities", which make any service available to their citizens within this time frame. And Solanilla has gone further: the metro and the railway play a crucial role in addressing difficulties in access to housing, since they "articulate the territory" and shorten distances. "It even opens up opportunities we didn't think of, as in the Estació de França itself. When La Sagrera is built, what will happen to this architectural jewel?" Solanilla asked, looking towards Paris and its now called Station F, an old station converted into a large center for startups and innovation.

Acosta has taken up Solanilla's gauntlet and highlighted the contribution of the railway to urban development and to the construction of smart and sustainable cities: while mobility represents 25% of greenhouse gas emissions, the train does not reach 0.5%, he stressed.

"The railway is a vector of sustainable mobility," defended the Renfe advisor in Engineering and Maintenance, who praised the importance of Rodalies as a metropolitan railway: "In some way, Rodalies is the metro of Catalunya," according to the also former director of Institutional Relations of the Alstom Group in Catalunya. Regarding Rodalies and its transfer from the central Government to the Generalitat, Acosta has claimed the need to address it taking into account its personnel: "The transfer of Rodalies cannot be done without counting on the workers; there is talk of technology and infrastructure, but those who move the trains should not be forgotten."

"In some way, Rodalies is the metro of Catalunya," Acosta defended.

Buesa has expressed himself in the same vein: "Workers are a key piece, as are infrastructures, facilities and rolling stock." The journalist, who has reviewed the deployment of the railway network in Catalunya during the last two decades, has defended that citizens opt for public transport if the offer is adequate: "If you offer people reliable and accessible public transport, you have a sure alliance with better, more integrated, and less polluted cities."

Combating this pollution and the climate emergency is key, and the railway has a central role in this regard, according to Camats. "But we are not doing it, or we are not doing it fast enough or well enough. We are on the right track, but we need to give it that push."

The director of the Fundació Catalunya Europa has championed citizen participation also in the railway sector: "The commitment to participation in policy design is not new; well done, this participation has shown that it helps improve the outcome of public policies."

And Camats has not only advocated for promoting citizen participation, but also that of cities in global debates. This is because cities generate many of today's problems, but at the same time have the capacity to solve them. In this regard, Camats recalled the approach of former Generalitat president Pasqual Maragall, promoter of her foundation: "Cities should not only manage their local space, but should be global actors."