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HIGH-SPEED rail operator Ouigo is just weeks away from launching its Valencia-Madrid connection, with around 35,600 slots a week for passengers.
Run by the French transport authority SNCF, the low-cost express between the capital and Spain's third-largest city has just increased its number of seats by 14,252 after negotiations with rail infrastructure body ADIF.
Ouigo had asked the State-run board to give it more routes, and research conducted showed it would be possible for an extra two return trips a day on the same line.
In total, this means the no-frills fast link will operate five return journeys a day between Madrid's Chamartín-Clara Campoamor station and Valencia's AVE terminus, the Joaquín Sorolla station.
The latter is reached from Valencia's main Estació Nord via free shuttle-bus.
Tickets on the Ouigo between Valencia and Madrid will start at €9 a head, and the journey takes less than two hours.
The same trip by road – which is nearly 100% motorway – takes approximately four hours, assuming no service-station stops or traffic jams, and costs an average of at least €100 in petrol.
Unsurprisingly, managing director of Ouigo Spain, Hélène Valenzuela, predicts 'very high demand' for the service.
Trains are two-storey, each with capacity for 509 passengers – more than double that of a standard-sized short-haul international airline and five times that of a small regional aircraft running internal flights – and its emissions are much lower.
According to Mme Valenzuela's calculations, a Ouigo train is 80 times less polluting than a standard aeroplane, and 50 times less than a car.
Ouigo's services will offer the equivalent capacity to 356 flights from Madrid to Valencia or the reverse on a Bombardier CRJ-1000, the typical aircraft used for this route and which has space for up to 100 passengers, or 17,815 car journeys, based upon an average of two people per vehicle.
The French low-cost express has already been operating with huge success along Spain's busiest long-distance commuter route, between Madrid and Barcelona, transporting over 2.8 million passengers – once it launches the Madrid-Valencia service, its capacity will increase, nationwide, to 83,476 seats a week.
Spain opened its rail services up to outside competition for the first time in history in 2021, meaning the State train company, RENFE, was no longer the sole operator – and which has led to price cuts in existing services in a bid to keep customers.
Ouigo plans to keep expanding, with its next route due to open in 2023, between Madrid and Alicante with a stop in Albacete, running two return journeys a day.
After the connections with the capital and Valencia, Alicante and Albacete are up and running, the firm then intends to break into the southern region of Andalucía 'as soon as possible'.
The idea is to operate five return journeys between Madrid and Málaga, and Madrid and Sevilla, with one or both stopping off in Córdoba.
Ouigo's first budget express train between Madrid and Valencia will be on the tracks on Friday, October 7.
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