Study on Strategic Evaluation on Transport Investment Priorities under Structural and Cohesion funds for the Programming Period 2007-2013 N o 2005.CE.16.0.AT.014 Country Report Spain Final Client: European Commission, DG-REGIO ECORYS Nederland BV Rotterdam, November 2006 ECORYS Nederland BV P.O. Box 4175 3006 AD Rotterdam Watermanweg 44 3067 GG Rotterdam The Netherlands T +31 (0)10 453 88 00 F +31 (0)10 453 07 68 E netherlands@ecorys.com W www.ecorys.com Registration no. 24316726 ECORYS Transport T +31 (0)10 453 87 59 F +31 (0)10 452 36 80 Table of contents 1 Introduction 7 1.1 Background 7 1.2 The Strategic Evaluation 8 1.3 The Country Report 8 1.4 Structure of the report 8 2 Transport Sector: current situation 10 2.1 Introduction 10 2.2 Spain 10 2.3 Situation per mode of transport 11 2.3.1 Roads and road transport 11 2.3.2 Railways 14 2.3.3 Urban transport 16 2.3.4 Inland waterway transport 17 2.3.5 Sea ports 17 2.3.6 Airports 20 2.3.7 Trends and indicators 21 2.4 Conclusions: SWOT analysis transport system 23 3 Accessibility analysis 25 3.1 Introduction 25 3.2 Methodology: Accessibility Problem Index 25 3.3 Transport needs 26 4 Previous support programmes 32 4.1 National public funding for transport infrastructure 32 4.2 EU funding 32 4.3 Other sources of financing 32 5 National Transport Strategy 37 5.1 Introduction 37 5.2 Long term National Transport Strategy and Planning 37 5.3 Operational Programme 2007-2013 40 5.4 Main objectives of the OP 40 5.5 Priorities in OP by sector 41 6 Prioritisation of Transport Investments (2007-2013) 42 6.1 Introduction 42 6.2 Community Strategic Guidelines 43 6.3 Additional factors for the prioritisation of transport investments 44 7 Impact assessment of scenarios 47 7.1 Introduction 47 7.2 Methodology 47 7.3 Scenarios 49 7.4 European effects 64 8 Conclusions on investment priorities 67 8.1 Introduction 67 8.2 Transport investment priorities 2007-2013 67 Annex A: TEN-T priorities 69 Annex B: Accessibility “red flag” analysis 75 7 1 Introduction 1.1 Background The recent enlargement of the EU to 25 Member States clearly creates a new challenge for its Cohesion Policy. Disparity levels within the EU have increased substantially and will further increase with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. This is an explicit point of attention as the Treaty states that, in order to strengthen its economic and social cohesion, the Community shall aim at reducing the disparities between the levels of development of various regions and the backwardness of the least favoured regions or islands, including rural areas. This aim lies at the core of the Commission’s regional policy. One of the key elements of the cohesion policy of the Commission is the contribution of the development of new transport infrastructure to regional economic development. Extensive spending has taken place in this domain under ERDF, Cohesion Fund and ISPA. One of the prominent initiatives in the European Union in this respect is the development of the Trans-European transport networks (TEN-T). In 2003 the Commission has identified the 30 priority projects of the TEN-T up to 2020. 1 The priority projects include: “the most important infrastructures for international traffic, bearing in mind the general objectives of the cohesion of the continent of Europe, modal balance, interoperability and the reduction of bottlenecks”. For the new programming period 2007-2013 the Commission seeks to strengthen the strategic dimension of cohesion policy to ensure that Community priorities are better integrated into national and regional development programmes. In accordance with the draft Council Regulation (article 23), the Council establishes Community Strategic Guidelines for cohesion policy to “give effect to the priorities of the Community with a view to promote balanced, harmonious and sustainable development” 2 . To assess the impact of programmes in relation to Community and national priorities the Commission has indicated that evaluations on a strategic level should be undertaken. The present evaluation should be seen as one of these specific strategic evaluations. The strategic evaluation should feed in the process of determining transport investment priorities and the preparation of the national strategic reference frameworks and 1 Decision 884/2004/EC of 29 April 2004. The total investment of the 30 priority projects amounts to € 225 billion at the 2020 horizon. 2 COM(2004)492 8 operational programmes. As such, it should serve to enhance the quality, effectiveness and consistency of Fund assistance. 1.2 The Strategic Evaluation The strategic evaluation is directed the transport sector. Three specific objectives have been formulated for this strategic evaluation: • To provide an analysis of the situation in selected fields relevant to transport, using structural indicators across Member States, plus Romania and Bulgaria; • To assess the contribution of Structural and Cohesion funds relative to the current and previous programming periods and draw lessons of relevance for the purpose of the study in terms of identification of potential shortcomings in the development of transport priority projects that might have hampered the utilization of those funds or their expected benefits; • To identify and evaluate needs in the selected fields and identify potential investment priorities of structural and cohesion funds for the programming period 2007-2013. 1.3 The Country Report The strategic evaluation results in specific country reports for all 15 countries and a synthesis report. The current report is the Country Report for Spain. Its main aim is to give a more detailed indication of the strengths and weaknesses of the transport system in the country and to address areas for future intervention. Where relevant this accompanied by recommendations with respect to the overall transport policy of the country. The country reports feed into the joint programming effort with the Member States for the next period, as will be detailed in the National Strategic Reference Frameworks and the subsequent Operational Programmes. 1.4 Structure of the report The report is structured around three building blocks. • First a needs assessment is presented based on an analysis of the current transport systems and a modelling analysis which reveals the current (relative) level of accessibility per region. This leads to first conclusions strengths and weaknesses of the current transport system and related transport investment needs (Part A). • Next an overview is presented of the transport investment priorities in the past period (Part B). • Finally, future areas for priority transport investments are identified. This builds on the needs assessment in the first part but also addresses other factors such as the contribution to EU and national policy objectives, the availability of other sources of funding and the administrative capacity of the country (Part C). 9 Part A: Needs assessment current situation 10 2 Transport Sector: current situation 2.1 Introduction This chapter describes the current transport situation and policy in Spain. After a brief introduction on the geographical and economic characteristics of the country, it first describes the situation per mode of transport. The analysis of the current situation is summarized in a SWOT table on the main strengths and weaknesses. The assessment of the transport system is followed by an analysis of the key transport policy issues in Spain. 2.2 Spain Spain is one of the larger EU countries with around 40 million inhabitants. The northern border with France is dominated by the Pyrenees Mountains, with only few cross border road and rail infrastructure. The western border with Portugal is mainly flat terrain, with the exception of the northwest part (near Vigo). Several TEN projects are relevant: • TEN-3 High-speed railway lines of south-west Europe (Lisbon - Badajoz – Madrid; Barcelona - Figueras - Perpignan - Montpellier – Nimes; Madrid - Vitoria - Irun/Hendaye – Bordeaux; Aveiro- Salamanca) • TEN-8 Multimodal Portugal/Spain - rest Europe (Coruna-Lisbon-Sines; Lisbon- Valladolid) • TEN-16 Freight Railway line Sines – Madrid – Paris • TEN-19 High-speed Rail interoperability on the Iberian Peninsula • TEN-21 Motorways of the sea [...]... only in transport in the most peripheral regions with the lowest accessibility according to such an indicator would benefit only the relatively few people living there and would ignore the needs of the densely populated central regions to combat traffic congestion and so endanger the competitiveness goal of the Lisbon Strategy of the European Union On the other hand, to invest only in transport in the. .. B: Past transport investment priorities 31 4 Previous support programmes 4.1 National public funding for transport infrastructure Information regarding the allocated national and private funding in the transport sector in the period 1994-2004 in Spain is to a great extent missing The only available information relates to the public cofinancing related to the CF and ERDF for the programming periods... mines in Andalucía for example) and a reduction in the activity of others (coal in different areas in the north of the peninsula) 2.3.3 Urban transport The main innovation in Spain related to urban public transport of the last few years has been the creation of the transport “consortia” that run the urban transport as an integrated system of the conventional modes This led to the introduction of new... source, highlighting Santander, Gijon, Ferrol, La Coruña, Algeciras, Almeria and Tarragona • The whole steel and iron sector located on the Cantabrian coast is the reason for the steel and iron industry movements of mineral iron and coal in Gijon and coal in Bilbao • The industry that transforms soya into animal feed explains large movements in Cartagena, Barcelona and Tarragona • The cereal business,... of BOT concessions, the basic investment is still made by the public sector Therefore, private sector participation in the port system has three overriding components, namely: • the purchase of equipment, • the building of fixed installations (conditioning of land for parks of vehicles, building of warehouses) • and working capital In short, this means that for the time being the only area of investment. .. as highlighting the importance of the underground, install new tram and light underground rail lines and the incorporation of buses that run on gas (they already make up 10% of the fleet), and on hydrogen (still in the experimental phase) The history of these consortia is quite recent, especially in relation to the integrated supply of urban transport which only fully materialised when the unified fare... Introduction This chapter presents a more quantitative transport needs assessment on a regional level It clearly complements Chapter 2 in which the current situation of the transport system is described where potential deficiencies are addressed The analysis on the current situation together with the analysis of transport needs from a cohesion perspective forms a basis for identifying possible investment priorities. .. with the ever growing presence of electric automotives, in 15 keeping with its greater role in the transportation of passengers on the regionalmetropolitan scale Demand The demand for passenger journeys has been growing steadily and to a considerable degree This is true for all operators, but not for all types of travel RENFE and FEVE, as well as the companies dependent on the Autonomous Regions have... higher share in the near future due to: • Investments in High Speed Rail and other high performance lines • Return to the former policy of new railway infrastructures and services integrated in urban transport systems (for a number of years the investments went only to tram and metro) 21 Return to the former policy of large investments in the conventional railway network, to improve security and increase... programming periods 1993-1999 and 2000-2006 In the period 1993-2005 the average cofinancing rate for the CF is 76% The national financial resources are all on the national public budget, no private resources are allocated The average co-financing rate for ERDF in the period 2000-2006 is 61% The rates of the national resources differ per region, typically values around 30% are found The regional funding is also . Study on Strategic Evaluation on Transport Investment Priorities under Structural and Cohesion funds for the Programming Period 2007-2013. interoperability and the reduction of bottlenecks”. For the new programming period 2007-2013 the Commission seeks to strengthen the strategic dimension of cohesion