Corridor description
The Mediterranean Corridor railway, included in the Core Network Corridor (MED CNC), is over 9,300 Km long and crosses 6 countries: Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary.
The MED CNC links the Iberian Peninsula with the Hungarian-Ukrainian border. It follows the Mediterranean coastlines of Spain and France, crosses the Alps towards the east through northern Italy, leaving the Adriatic coast in Slovenia and Croatia heading towards Hungary.
Key railway projects along this corridor are the Lyon – Turin links and the Venice – Ljubljana section. It will also create an east-west link through the southern part of the EU, contribute to intramodality in sensitive areas such as the Pyrenees and the Alps and connect some of the major urban areas of the EU with high-speed trains.
The MED CNC includes the following sections:
- Algeciras – Bobadilla –Madrid – Zaragoza – Tarragona
- Sevilla – Bobadilla – Murcia
- Cartagena – Murcia – Valencia – Tarragona
- Tarragona – Barcelona – Perpignan – Marseille/Lyon – Torino – Novara – Milano – Verona – Padova – Venezia – Ravenna/Trieste/Koper - Ljubljana – Budapest
- Ljubljana/Rijeka – Zagreb – Budapest – UA border
ERTMS deployment on the corridor
There are 9,375.75 km where ERTMS is expected to be deployed in the MED corridor by 2030, with 17% already in operation with ETCS, 45% in operation with GSM-R, ETCS under construction in 12% of the length and GSM-R in 12%.
Defining the short term deployment as the length to be deployed by 2023 according to the EDP (3,013.67 km), 48% is in operation while 32% is still under construction. The MED corridor has 32% of its total length planned to be deployed by 2023.
No section is planned to be deployed in Croatia by 2023, and just 2% of the French length of the MED corridor is scheduled to be put into operation by then (already in operation). The most challenging situation is in Spain, where 1,520.62 km should be put in operation in the short term. Currently, 65% of the planned km by 2023 are in operation, so its deployment is progressing well.
In Slovenia, all the lines to be deployed by 2023 are under construction or already in operation. The Ljubljana – Hodos line is delayed from 2017 to 2020 due to infrastructure works. In Hungary, none of the sections is in operation yet. Most sections in Hungary to be deployed by 2018 are delayed, due to lack of funding. Some of the existing sections are equipped with ETCS pre-baseline 2 and are going to be upgraded to Level 2 Baseline 2.