A train from the Iryo railway company, joint subsidiary of the Italian group Trenitalia (45%), the Spanish airline Air Nostrum (31%) and the infrastructure company Globalvia (24%), during its maiden journey on the Spanish high-speed network. Photo taken in Madrid on November 21, 2022 (AFP/Pierre-Philippe Marcou)
Renfe, SNCF and now Iryo: from Friday, three railway companies will offer their services on the Spanish high-speed network. A first scrutinized closely in Europe, where the opening to competition is turning the rail market upside down.
A joint subsidiary of the Italian group Trenitalia (45%), the Spanish airline Air Nostrum (31%) and the infrastructure company Globalvia (24%), Iryo made its maiden voyage on Monday, four days before the start of its commercial operations.
This new company comes to compete with the incumbent operator Renfe and the SNCF, present since May 2021 via its subsidiary Ouigo on the Spanish high-speed network, the largest in Europe and the second in the world after that of China, with 4,000 kilometers dedicated lanes.
The arrival of this third operator “marks a historic step” for Spanish high speed and “for passengers” who will have “the choice between several companies” on certain axes, underlines to AFP Carlos Lérida, professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM).
A step that is all the more significant, according to this specialist in rail transport, as it is “unpublished” in Europe. “So far, no high-speed network has worked with three competitors. Spain could therefore serve as a model,” insists Mr. Lérida.
– “Democratization” –
Initially, only the Madrid-Barcelona line will be served by the Trenitalia subsidiary. But Iryo, which has 20 trains, will run from mid-December on the Madrid-Valencia axis, before moving on to Madrid-Seville and Madrid-Malaga in March 2023.
Enough to compete directly with Renfe, but also with Ouigo Spain, which already serves Barcelona and Valencia, and plans to launch trains to Alicante (south-east) then Andalusia (south) in the course of the year 2023.
Staff from the railway company Iryo, a joint subsidiary of the Italian group Trenitalia (45%), the Spanish airline Air Nostrum (31%) and the infrastructure company Globalvia (24%), during its maiden voyage on the Spanish high-speed network. Photo taken in Madrid on November 21, 2022 (AFP/Pierre-Philippe Marcou)
This competition “is the consequence of the framework contracts signed with Adif”, manager of the Spanish rail network, which in 2019 granted traffic slots “for ten years” on these different sections, underlines Carlos Lérida.
An evolution encouraged by the government of the socialist Pedro Sanchez, eager to make the Spanish high-speed network more profitable and to lower the price of tickets, which had been very high until then.
This “unprecedented opening of the market will make it possible to make high speed accessible to a greater number of citizens” and “to increase the profitability” of the LGV network, underlined Monday in a press release the Minister of Transport Raquel Sanchez.
An analysis shared by the director of Ouigo Spain, Hélène Valenzuela, who assures that the Spanish network was “underused”. For the company, which invested 630 million euros in its Spanish adventure, against a billion euros for Iryo, “the risk-taking was therefore limited”, she insists to AFP.
– “Opportunity” –
Since the arrival of Ouigo, attendance has jumped 14% across the entire network, and 47% between Madrid and Barcelona, according to Adif. The price of tickets on this section has dropped by 25%, according to the competition authority.
Faced with the aggressive prices of Ouigo, Renfe has diversified its offer by launching its own low-cost trains, called Avlo. The Spanish operator, which wishes to enter the French market, has also renovated its fleet and strengthened its services to users.
“We see the arrival of competition as an opportunity and not as a problem”, assures a spokesperson for the company, which anticipates a sharp increase in attendance, with in the medium term “45 million users”, i.e. “10 million more than today”.
“Our big rivals are the plane and the car, not the other trains”, abounds Hélène Valenzuela, for whom the competition “benefits the whole sector”: “on a technical level, it is a challenge, because it flows have to be organized in the stations. But economically, it is an opportunity”.
In her press release, the Minister of Transport said on Monday that she wanted to extend the competition to other routes, in particular to Galicia (north-west) and along the Mediterranean coast. We also need “reciprocity in other EU countries to expand the market”, she insisted.
National companies have lost their monopoly on high-speed lines under the liberalization of rail implemented by Brussels. But the opening to competition has been delayed in several countries, including France, due in particular to the reluctance of incumbent operators.
© 2022 AFP
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