The Mediterranean Railway Corridor (MRC) would lower the cost of transporting fruits and vegetables from Murcia, Almería and Alicante to Europe by up to €0.06 per kilo according to data published by the Association of Valencian Entrepreneurs (AVE).
The railway corridor linking Algeciras in Southern Spain to the French border would also save €0.03 for every 1,000 km travelled, the association said.
Producers are calling on the government to speed up construction work on the railway, which would connect them to a 3,500 km of trans-European network linking the south and north of the continent.
Such a link would improve the connectivity of Mediterranean ports, which have become a gateway for goods arriving to mainland Spain from Asia, and boost intermodal transportation leading to a reduction of the number of trucks on the roads. It would also provide much needed employment to the region.
Fruits and vegetables would be one of the main beneficiaries of the MRC, one of the priority projects of the European Commission’s Trans-European Networks of Transport (TEN-T) initiative to improve Europe’s rail infrastructure. It would allow freight to be transported non-stop from Gibraltar to Stockholm by train.
