Page 96 - Vía Libre Special - 25 Years of Spanish High Speed Rail

SPECIAL

years of Spanish high speed rail

cesses. The result has been the development of a ledo, Madrid-Valencia-Albacete, and Madrid-Galicia.
new track laying method, TECSA-AVE, which has re- Abroad we have deployed our signalling systems
volutionized the construction of the superstructure on the Ankara-Istanbul line and our experience has
of high speed track. given us the opportunity to apply high speed tech-
nology on conventional networks in Mexico on the
2. These new track laying systems represent the Cuautitlán-Buenavista suburban line (the first ETCS
greatest advance in railway construction in recent system in America). We are also deploying ETCS level
years. Thanks to them performance has been in- 2 on the Mexico-Toluca line and there is project to
creased hugely (>250%) while the final quality of the deploy ETCS level 1 on the Tepekoy-Cuomavasi line
track is also improved. The new methods and the in Turkey.
machinery developed to implement them have been
patented both in Spain and internationally, and they
are arousing the interest of railway authorities and
companies all over the world.

3. TECSA is currently involved in the construction of
the corridors yet to be completed, and the mainte-
nance of high speed lines already in operation.

TYPSA

1. T1. TYPSA has been involved in the development of
the high speed rail in Spain since its very beginnings.
It took part in the first work on Madrid-Seville HSL
and was then involved in all the lines built in Spain:
Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona-French Border, Cor-
THALES doba-Malaga, and Madrid-Segovia-Valladolid, and
their connections with the north and northwest of
Spain, such as the Basque Y or the connection with
1. Thales España has developed systems and pro- Galicia, the Madrid-Castile La Mancha-Valencian
ducts for the Spanish railway market, leveraging and Community-Region of Murcia line, the high speed
building on our strengths in RD&I and engineering. Navarre corridor, the Madrid-Badajoz line, and the
With the deployment of ERTMS and signalling sys- Galician Atlantic Axis. On these routes TYPSA has
tems over a large part of the Spanish high speed rail carried out all kinds of work; informative studies,
network we have succeeded in becoming a bench- construction designs, construction supervision, te-
mark company in both Spain and abroad, thereby chnical support to construction supervision, etc.
helping to maintain and improve the good opera-
tion of the second largest high speed network in the 2. The construction of the high speed network in
world. Spain was a great opportunity for all the companies
involved in its development, allowing them to acqui-
2. The Madrid-Seville project was a key reference due re cutting edge experience in this field which then
to its innovative technology which has been evolving opens up other markets, facilitating companies’ in-
over the years. It was the beginning of everything ternational expansion.
Thales is today in the high speed rail sector, since it
enabled us to make a great impact, not only at a na- 3. In addition to Spanish projects, TYPSA has parti-
tional level but internationally as well. We are selling cipated to a greater or lesser extent in the develo-
the experience acquired in Spain to markets abroad, pment of major international high speed projects,
and have become a competence centre in this tech- such as Madrid-Lisbon (Poceirao-Caia section), Fi-
nology within the Thales Group. gueres-Perpignan (Spain-France), Sao Paulo-Rio
de Janeiro (Brazil), Lyon-Turin (France-Italy), Laho-
3. Thales España has been working on over 2,700 re-Rawalpindi (Pakistan), Los Angeles-Las Vegas
km of the Spanish high speed rail network since the (USA) and TYPSA is currently involved in the develo-
first Madrid-Seville line, on the lines of Madrid-Léri- pment of high speed rail in Sweden (Jonköping-Mal-
da, Madrid-Valladolid, Cordoba-Malaga, La Sagra-To- mö and Ostlänken), and in the UK (HS2).

96 Vía Libre • Special 25th Anniversary of the AVE Edition