SPAIN: After a decade in limbo, plans have been revived for tram-train style service from Manacor to Artá in the northeast of the island of Mallorca.
Development was suspended for financial reasons in 2012. In mid-March this year, the regional government and Manacor town council agreed to restart the scheme, encouraged by increasing ridership on the island’s railways and from a desire to reduce the use of cars and fossil fuel.
The project would use the route of a closed railway, with around 1·7 km of new alignment needed to get around Manacor.
In Manacor, the single track railway would run along the central reservation of Passeig del Ferrocarril, with road traffic diverted over a new road from the Plaça de Madrid to the hospital. There would be stops in an industrial estate, on Passeig del Ferrocarril and adjacent to the hospital, and a halt at the end of the Passeig Antoni Maura would serve a park-and-ride facility.
The total cost of the scheme, is estimated at €29·2m.
In the longer term the line could be extended to Capdepera and Son Carrió.
Through services from Palma de Mallorca are not envisaged, so passengers would need to change at Manacor.
