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The construction of a truly high-speed railway line between Malaga and Granada is slowly taking shape, which is key to improving the service between the two provinces, as well as, of course, to do the same between Granada city and Madrid. Adif, the state railway infrastructure company, has just put out to tender the contract for 10 million euros to purchase 80,000 railways sleepers required to install double track on 46 kilometres of the line.
Specifically, this will be the section between the Archidona junction and the Riofrío junction. With the planned or ongoing projects, which also include the new Loja by-pass and a second track being laid between the new bypass and Íllora, 82 kilometres of the line will be configured as double-tracked, representing two thirds of its total length.
The line between Antequera and Granada was inaugurated in 2019 but it left the challenge of the Loja bypass pending, a whopping 19 kilometres long and fraught with environmental and technical hurdles. Neither was the double track project undertaken in the neighbouring province. Yet the difficult part had already been fulfilled: the construction of the required 14-metre-wide platform. Fortunately, contracts for electrification, track and signalling are usually signed in short sections and, logically, are carried out at a different speed to the construction work. In any case, and being optimistic that nothing else will be delayed, the fast connection between the two cities (50-55 minutes) will not be completed before well into 2028.
In order for both cities to have a 'real' high-speed service, an investment exceeding 400 million euros is needed for the pending route. It's worth remembering that the first construction work began way back in 2009.
Of the 19 kilometres remaining, 11.2 kilometres are now underway. In detail, of the four sections, the viaduct over the conventional line at the Bobadilla-Granada-Loja bypass, in the Riofrío area (1.7 kilometres), is finished. The Loja-Riofrío bypass (3.2 kilometres) is under construction and the contract for the Loja-A-92 bypass (6.3km) has been awarded (worth over 138 million euros).
However, the longest remaining section, the 7.9-kilometre Loja-Genil Valley bypass, is experiencing significant delays. It has just been put out to tender for a total of 341 million euros. Major archaeological survey work has been necessary at the Roman villa of Salar, which has influenced the design of the viaduct bearing the same name.
The new high-speed station at Loja is also in the pipeline. In July 2023, the contract for drafting the construction project for these facilities was awarded for 747,970 euros. These facilities will be located in the area known as Dehesa de las Noventa, near the junction of the A-92 dual carriageway with the A-341 access road to Venta del Rayo.
Another challenge for construction work in this area is the environmental conditions, which further complicate the technical solutions. Among other issues, there is an aquifer that supplies water to Loja, which is avoided with the proposed route but which involves going up a hillside and having to resort to tunnels and viaducts, creating extra work and more expense.
In terms of infrastructure, several unique elements stand out. The first is the aforementioned 580-metre-long viaduct, already built. Among the others yet to be tackled we can mention the Manzanil viaduct (1.7 kilometres), the Juncar viaduct (63 metres), Salar viaduct (613 metres) and the tunnels of Los Abades (615 metres) and Las Monjas (693 metres), in the Sierra Gorda mountain range.
At the moment the fastest connection time between Malaga and Granada is one hour and 17 minutes, so it is easy to understand the leap in quality that connecting both city centres in under one hour will represent. This is even more significant if we take into account the restrictive policies on private vehicles in Granada and the implementation of low-emission zones in all cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants.
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