The Tenerife Island Council plans to launch an “international ideas competition” before the end of 2024 to introduce an elevated train project in the northern region of the island. This train would run above the motorway, ensuring minimal land use.
During a recent policy debate, Rosa Dávila, President of the Tenerife Island Council, announced this initiative aimed at advancing the island’s transport infrastructure.
The ambitious project to introduce train services in Tenerife, both in the north and south, is estimated to cost over 2.5 billion Euros. Currently, funding sources are being explored, with the Canarian Government considering dividing the project into phases due to financial constraints.
Despite the financial hurdles, Dávila emphasised that the international competition will mark the beginning of a visionary railway project that will redefine transport infrastructure on the island.
“We must think innovatively and strategically for the future, considering elevated solutions that utilise existing technologies like suspended monorail trains, similar to those successfully operating in Japan or China,” Dávila stated.
Dávila advocated for the implementation of a train network as a reliable and eco-friendly transportation mode for both the northern and southern regions of the island, diverging from the previous focus on bus lanes according to the Tenerife Island Sustainable Mobility Plan formulated in the previous term.
The proposed train route between San Isidro and Costa Adeje would establish a vital transport link, serving as the third most significant railway system in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona, benefiting the daily movement of 500,000 individuals between these regions.
Dávila highlighted the importance of integrating Tenerife into the General Interest Railway Network to access funding opportunities from national and European sources.
She recounted high-level discussions with the Ministry of Transport and ongoing consultations with railway authorities and the Canarian Government to secure financial support, with plans to seek additional funding in Brussels in the near future.
Stressing the urgency for improved mobility solutions, Dávila called for a collaborative effort to address the island’s transport challenges arising from population growth and tourism. The Cabildo’s strategies are geared towards enhancing mobility infrastructure.
Dávila underlined that almost three and a half million journeys are made on the island daily, with 93% being carried out by residents for work, studying, or medical appointments. [The hospitals in the northern and southern parts of the island still lack a complete range of services].
Additionally, he mentioned that over a million of these trips take place between the municipalities in the metropolitan area.
Simultaneously, there are over 150,000 daily journeys along the TF-5, linking the north to the capital, and almost 700,000 trips between the Southwest and Abona areas. The majority of these are done via private vehicles occupied by a single individual, which he described as “an outdated model already in Europe.”
Dávila has advocated for a “change in our way of transportation” to reduce the number of cars on the roads and to “save minutes on each journey by implementing many solutions that have never been tried before. These solutions might seem small when analyzed individually, but when combined, they will be effective.”
It is important to note that during the electoral campaign, Rosa Dávila pledged to resolve the issue of traffic congestion in Tenerife within just 90 days, later acknowledging that it is indeed a “complex” problem.