We are very proud to support the Western Corridor – Silver Railway Route Manifesto, an initiative that has been promoted by 12 Chambers of Commerce in the north and south of our country – Avilés, Gijón, Oviedo, Astorga, León, Salamanca, Béjar, Cáceres, Badajoz, Huelva, Sevilla and Cádiz – and which urges official institutions to recover some of the sections of railway tracks that were closed in the past between Andalusia, Extremadura and Castile and León.
In a new era of transport, in which the railroad is proving to be a more efficient and sustainable means of transport, promoting this connection and including it in the route of the Atlantic Railway is an important step forward, since it will allow to complement the current radial network, which has great weaknesses, with a circular one, contributing to the creation of a distributed network of great robustness, effectiveness and efficiency. The replacement of the Plasencia – Salamaca section, of about 130 km, which connects the two central branches of the Atlantic Railway, will avoid the passage of goods through Madrid, which do not originate or are not destined to Madrid, reducing the risk of turning this central node, as the EU has repeatedly warned, into a “bottleneck” which would hinder the transport of goods by rail and the achievement of safe, reliable and sustainable mobility objectives.
As the platform explains in its manifesto, there are strong social, economic and territorial reasons for its replacement due to the characteristics of the territories it connects, environmental reasons, such as ensuring climate neutrality and strategic reasons; because of the essential role it plays in connecting the ports in the Northwest of the Peninsula, with greater accessibility to those in Central Europe, with those in the Southwest of the Peninsula, with better accessibility to the Canary Islands, Africa and South America. It is enough to see the importance of the role played by the Mediterranean Corridor in the intermodal transport; connecting its ports linked to the railroad, which the current Atlantic Corridor cannot offer due to the existing North-South disconnection by means of the historic Silver Route.
Now it is our turn. Whether you are an institution, a public representative, a private individual or a company, you can voice your support by signing the manifesto on its website and sharing the contents that will published periodically on Facebook and Linkedin. Together we can urge our elected officials to take one more step towards a fairer and more sustainable means of transport.
Juan M. Corchado 