Malaga's main train station starts to strain under pressure of 9 million passengers in one year

A regular passenger on the train route between Malaga and Seville has informed SUR of a common occurrence these days: the lack of space at the María Zambrano station, forcing train drivers to stop vehicles far from the concourse due to oversaturation and increasing demand for routes.

Ironically, the Malaga resident stated that the service he uses should be called "Los Prados-Seville, Seville-Los Prados", due to the distance passengers need to walk to get on or off the train.

As can be seen in the photos that the complainant sent to SUR, the train is parked at the end of the tracks at María Zambrano station, causing "consequent annoyance and protests from the people. It is almost 500 metres walking, when the tracks that go all the way to the end are empty", said the man, highlighting that "the elderly and disabled people suffer a lot".

This incident is the first obvious sign of the saturation that is starting to take shape at Malaga's train station. The facility is already becoming too small for the ever-increasing demand for trains. This practice is justified as "a matter of maximising capacity", as confirmed by Spain's railway infrastructure manager (Adif).

According to sources, passengers are sometimes shocked when they can't see their train parked at the ticket barrier The reason is that these rails are equipped with specific points that allow two parallel tracks in both directions to be linked in a reduced space. These devices allow a train about to arrive to be positioned parallel to the one already stationed, then enter through the switch and position itself in front.

At present, this only happens on a temporary basis and is not the norm. "The usual thing is for the medium-distance train to advance to the buffer stop; however, there are times when another train is about to arrive, but we do not have a parking track for it." Therefore, thanks to the switches, Adif can use the entire length of the platform. "It is a question of efficiency and of trying to make the most of the capacity, given the number of trains, both long- and medium-distance, already operating at Málaga-María Zambrano."

The problem mostly concerns medium-distance services, such as those to Seville and Granada, because they are generally shorter convoys, running in single units. However, no train route is an exception. Therefore, in the event of the arrival of two trains at very close times, priority is given to those running in double trains or those that are fuller, as is usually the case with long-distance, high-speed trains that connect with Madrid.

The arrival of high-speed competition has multiplied the number of operators and high-speed trains at the Malaga terminal. In addition to Renfe, with its brands AVE and Avlo, two private companies operate in Malaga: Iryo and Ouigo. As a result, Iryo offers up to 22 daily departures in each direction, while French company Ouigo, which was the last to arrive this past January, plans to expand to three frequencies this summer. The availability of schedules for same-day round-trip journeys is now double what it was just two years ago, thanks to the liberalisation of the high-speed networks carried out by the government.

It is therefore not surprising that María Zambrano experienced the best year in its history in 2024, with close to nine million passengers served, 2.6 million more than in the same period of 2023 (6,286,484, which was the highest mark, until now). To put it in context, this is almost double the number in 2022, and nearly triple that of 2023, according to data available on the Piservi portal, which depends on Adif. Over the last twelve months, almost 4.56 million people have travelled on board 14,697 long-distance convoys and 1.23 million travelled on 9,841 medium-distance services.

Malaga terminal has eight platforms, although only five of them are UIC gauge, which allows the arrival of high-speed trains. The other three are of Iberian gauge, for conventional medium-distance and Cercanías trains. Although all of them have the common track length (450 metres), the platforms do not all have the same dimensions: Platform 1 measures 250 metres; 2 and 3 measure 350 metres; and 4 and 5 are the largest, with 410 metres.