Fast and on time: Spain's AVE - new high-speed train service - Column

Railway Age, June, 1992 by Joe Evangelista

Spain has dressed herself well for this year's festivals: the party in Seville and later the Olympiad in Barcelona. One of the things visitors will hear about if not experience is the AVE.

There are 293 miles of beautiful, high-speed track sitting all alone in the middle of Spain. Running from Madrid to Seville, it carries the first example of GEC Alsthom's TGV technology installed outside France. Named AVE, the train whisks passengers smoothly at a maximum speed of 186 mph across plains and over mountains and in two hours and forty-five minutes drops them off in Seville's new, "user-friendly" downtown Santa Justa station. Eventually, trip time will be reduced to two hours. There is also a rail station at the Expo site, with through services from Madrid. Otherwise there is a shuttle train service between Santa Justa and the World's Fair. For those who never have ridden the TGV in France, this stretch of track will give an experience unlike any other. Smooth is a poor word to describe the ride, which hasn't a bump or a screeching halt or any of the anomalies common to the rest of Spain's iron road. There is no sensation of speed on the AVE--it is apparent only when you look out the window. The grading is so expert that you don't notice your elevation into the mountains nor your descent to the plains.

So far, the AVE has cost about $4.4 billion. It gives a wonderfully futuristic impression to visitors, and also a step forward for high-speed rail and for GEC Alsthom.

But the AVE presents the traveler with a bundle of contradictions. The technology seems impeccable, but the aesthetics seem a bit deficient.

For example, the train is presented in an airplane analogy, right down to the fare structure and the "have a good flight" tag line in the advertisements. But the fares don't buy a great deal of difference. Seating in Club is in boxes of opposed pairs along one side of the aisle, or in a string of deuces running along the windows on the other. You can enjoy an "in-flight movie" in Club, shown on little monitors facing each pair of seats, if you speak Spanish. You can enjoy a selection of newspapers, brought by a smiling stewardess, if you can read Spanish.

It was difficult to simply sit back and enjoy the trip. The seats are designed more for the eye than for a proper human body, as they tended to thrust the hips forward of their natural position relative to the shoulders.

The biggest contradiction of all, however, is that this single length of beautiful track and the lovely trip thereon serves to highlight the problems with the rest of the Spanish rail system. Travelers continuing on to Cadiz, for example (a distance of about 70 miles), will find that it can take almost as long as the AVE to Seville.

But the AVE surely beats flying and, all tolled, takes the same amount of time out of the day. The advantage is that the time can be spent productively, or at least pleasantly.