The railway is gaining more weight in the Port of Valencia, according to the company's release. In total, 4,634 trains entered or left the Valencian precinct in 2022, 9% more than in 2021. Trains that are longer, with more wagons and carrying more containers and goods. And the trend for the coming years is that this figure will continue to increase, both in Valencia and in Sagunto, the latter port where work is being done on rail access.
The Port Authority of Valencia (PAV) has been making for years to promote the rail-sea interconnection for the transport of goods.
To considerably increase the 4% share of the train in the movement of goods and products in order to get closer to the European average of 18%. In fact, the APV has budgeted 240 million Euro for actions with the locomotive and wagons as the main characters, in addition to other projects such as the Valencia-Madrid railway motorway, the support to loading points in its hinterland or the use of new technologies in the sector.
According to the Port of Valencia’s rail-port traffic data, in 2022 a total of 4,634 trains entered or left the Valencian docks compared to approximately 4,200 in 2021. In addition, the average length of these trains was 495 metres compared to 485 in the previous year, while the number of wagons in 2022 rose to 87,070 compared to 76,563 in 2021, which represents an increase of 15%.
In 2022, a total of 2,230,683 goods were transported by rail, 8% more than in 2021, and 236,142 TEUs (standard 20-foot containers) were used, 21,594 containers more than in the previous year, an increase of 10%. In addition, the container data shows an upward trend in recent years, in 2021 the share of containers moved by train compared to the Port’s total was 7.8%, a figure which in 2022 stood at 8.9%.
Over the next few years, investments of around 240 million euros are planned to promote accessibility and improve Valenciaport’s rail network. These actions are destined to the remodelling of the railway network in the Port of Valencia, the electrification of tracks, the adaptation of the network to the European gauge, the railway access to the Port of Sagunto or the improvement of the Valencia-Teruel-Zaragoza line, among others.