The railway access to the port of Tarragona

The railway access to the port of Tarragona

The solution that has been adopted to connect by rail the port of Tarragona with the European standard railway freight network includes placing a third rail on the conventional line that connects Tarragona with the rail hub in Castellbisbal, via Vilafranca. Only 87 km of rail line are considered, since this freight corridor is operational for almost 2 years to Perpignan. This solution created controversy in political and industrial sector of Tarragona county, where there are strong opponents of the solution. The polemic is against the real need to run short-term international gauge and besides to do it using the conventional rail line Tarragona-Barcelona. This line is close to saturation and could drag out the regular journies of regional trains, medium and large distance. Besides, the implementation of the third track in the first phase will take place only in this way, so it requires the exploitation of double width, single track both ways and the installation of multiple sidings on its way. If we add the context of economic recession and the large opportunity cost of public investment funds, it has been considered appropriate to evaluate the social costs and benefits of the infrastructure solution, wich was approved by the Minister of Development.

Two main cases has been considered. The first one belongs to the first step towards the Mediterranean rail Corridor from the Tarragona’s county, which is the main purpose of this study, which runs along the number 600 of Adif’s lines, running through Sant Vincenç de Calders and Vilafranca and reaching Castellbisbal. The second case study is based on the upgrade of the line running from the Ford factory in Almussafes (Valencia) to Castellbisbal. With this case is intended to get a macro view of the analysis and check the consistency and robustness of the used method. Besides, a third subcase has been proposed, which is intended be an alternative to the first case study and to try to solve some of the inconvenients of the future connection. For each one of these three cases, it has gone ahead with a technical description of the necessary infrastructure, an estimated budgets as well as exposing the necessary previous conditions for its development.

Given the special features of the infrastructure that it will be appraised -is not a newly builded infrastructure, but the adaptation of an existing one and only for freight traffic-, a new method has been adapted on its features based on three consolidated project appraisal guidelines. It has also been necessary to conduct a traffic forecasting, given the absence or inability to access a detailed origin-destination survey. From this point on, the hyphoteses on the demand forecasting has been settled down (according to the jodiciousness proceeding) and been used as the base point in the cost benefit analysis.

Up to the obtained values, a sensitivity analysis of the obtained parameters is done and also a comparison between the three cases. Besides, a multicriteria analysis has been carried out, between the base case and the proposed one in order to evaluate and compare more than social costs and benefits. Finally, the conclusions are presented as well ase some considerations, wich has been reached during the thesis drafting, to discuss.

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