Government to commission 1.2m-euro feasibility study for a train along the entire Costa del Sol

It is easy to say, “I’llbelieve it when I see it.” But the truth is the news on Thursday this week from the national government’s ministry of transport that a formal feasibility study of a train line along the entire Costa del Sol will go ahead is a step forward. Never before has it been done in the long history of attempts to get this service up and running.

Government technical experts have already studied the existing demand for this railway and found more than enough reasons to go to this next stage.

As a result, the ministry’s head of sustainable mobility, Álvaro Fernández Heredia, meeting with local and regional government counterparts in Malaga, announced that before the end of the year, the ministry is going to put out to tender a feasibility study covering the length of the whole area: that is to say, from Nerja in the east to Algeciras in the west.

This study will decide the route along which it would run and the type of rail service that would be best (with many or few intermediate stops, best places for stations to attract passengers, etc.).

However, the ministry boss has warned that a train alone is not the whole solution and that a fully integrated local transport plan, for which the regional government is responsible, will be needed too, which must consider aspects such as connecting bus services and park and rides.

The report is a legal requirement in order for a train line to go ahead and previous studies did not get as far as the environmental impact stage so no formal route recommendation was ever made. This new study will be carried out by an independent consultancy, cost 1.2 million euros and take 18 months to finish. It will be put out to tender before the end of the year.

The government added that it is doing all it can to speed up the timetable and get the report ready in time. To achieve this an initial, big data analysis using existing sources has already been carried out and information from previous studies has been added.

“There has been a succession of studies since 2006, but each one of them has identified sections with different solutions, but not with an overall solution, and so they are not usable,” Fernández Heredia explained.

“For the first time, all the possible combinations of the different alternatives that have been given for the coastal train are going to be studied,” he added.

“From the ministry’s perspective, we think [this railway] is in keeping with our sustainable mobility strategy and without a doubt could be a public transport alternative for the area to achieve lower levels of congestion and to provide a solution for users who do not have a car and need the guarantee of getting around by public transport.

“The feasibility study for the first time is not going to leave any solution out; there is a heated debate about whether it has to be a Cercanías suburban line or an extension of the high-speed line to the airport that goes only to Marbella, and each has advantages and disadvantages. We believe that it has to be a solution for daily mobility, for day-to-day life, but we are going to study all the alternatives together, looking at the compatibility between them to finally offer the answer to which is the best coastal train for the whole area,” said Fernández Heredia.

In any case, there are still years to go until the first railway sleeper can be laid. And, as technical sources warn, depending on the result of the feasibility study, a further, informative study will have to be carried out afterwards, which will take at least two more years.

From there, the plans of each section or phase in which the line will be subdivided, which would cost several billion euros, tenders and, finally, the building work itself.