MADRID -- It's 8 a.m. at the Puerto de Atocha train station in central Madrid. Business travelers armed with cellphones and laptops, and pleasure travelers toting cameras and carry-on bags, make their way through security to board the high-speed trains that connect Spain's capital to cities across the nation.
The sprawling station, which dates to the 1890s, serves not only the AVE, or Alta Velocidad Española high-speed trains, but also the city's metro subway and commuter trains. It sits amid a bustling district of offices, hotels, restaurants, museums and other businesses.
This is the vision shared by backers of California's proposed, but controversial, high-speed rail system. And there are lessons -- from both successes and mistakes -- that California can learn from Spain's 20-year history with high-speed trains.
Top among them is just how hard it is to be self-sufficient, even when conditions seem ideal, as they have in Spain.
TIM SHEEHAN/THE FRESNO BEE
Fresno Bee Staff Photo - Two French built Alstom AVE trains pull into the station at Seville. These high speed trains travel between Madrid and Seville, connecting hundreds of people to the country's capital turning a six-hour drive into a 2.5 hour trip.
TIM SHEEHAN/THE FRESNO BEE
Train operator Jose Jimenez pushes the AVE train to its top operating speed on a trip between Valencia and Madrid.
TIM SHEEHAN / THE FRESNO BEE
Passengers disembark the Spanish-built TALGO trains in Valencia after arriving from Madrid.
TIM SHEEHAN/THE FRESNO BEE
Spain's high speed trains are designed to operate at a maximum speed of 300 km/h the equivalent to 186 mph.
TIM SHEEHAN/THE FRESNO BEE
The seating inside the tourist class of the Spanish built AVE trains give passengers a smooth ride with room to work. Each seat has a power outlet and a headphone jack and many riders do business as they travel the country.
TIM SHEEHAN/THE FRESNO BEE
Managers inside the ADIF control center in Madrid can monitor high speed trains across the country. They are responsible for the safety and maintennance of the track system.
TIM SHEEHAN/THE FRESNO BEE
Germa Bel, an economics professor in Barcelona, believes Spain's spending on high speed rail is unnecessary and wasteful. He says the system does not have enough passengers to pay for itself.
TIM SHEEHAN/THE FRESNO BEE
Andreu Ulied, an engineering consultant in Barcelona, says Spain has expanded its high speed rail network without adequate study of whether it makes economic sense.
Despite popular and political support from the very beginning, the AVE rail system faces a tougher future in the midst of Europe's financial crisis.
Already, service between some smaller cities has been cut because too few people ride the trains. Some wonder if it is anything more than a luxury commuter service.
Among the growing fraternity of nations with high-speed trains, Spain is considered the best geographic and cultural analogy to California and its train plans. The long-distance AVE trains and their regional cousins Avant and Alvia, which share the high-speed tracks, connect major urban centers but pass through smaller cities and stretches of rural farmland, just like what is planned for California.
They've gotten people out of their cars and off airplanes, sliced travel times and attracted millions of riders a year -- just what California rail boosters hope will happen here.
Since the late 1980s, Spain has spent about $60 billion to build and equip its high-speed network.
President Barack Obama touted Spain's system as a model for American high-speed rail plans when he announced billions of dollars in federal investments in April 2009.
And Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood voiced admiration for the Spanish network when he visited Spain last summer.
"We know that you are the experts. We know that you have developed a state-of-the-art system here," he said. "It's not lost on anyone that when President Obama proposed this high-speed rail plan, he specifically called out Spain as an example for America to emulate."
Spain's system, however, was launched in conditions much different from what California is experiencing today. Political unity, a thriving economy and the spotlight of international events -- a world exposition in Seville and the Olympic Games in Barcelona -- all provided an impetus for Spain to embark on its high-speed journey.
About the only major point of contention was where the first line from Madrid should go (Seville won over Barcelona), not whether it should happen at all.
While Spain continues to build and expand its system through both good and bad economic times, cost is a key concern in cash-strapped California. Planners are wrestling with a price tag that has doubled over the past two years and grappling with the thorny issue of where to get the money to build it when both state and federal budgets are under strain.
Unlike in California, Spain's high-speed rail effort has not been a public or political punching bag. It's rapidly expanded to become Europe's most extensive high-speed network -- and third only to China and Japan's worldwide -- while facing remarkably little of the NIMBYism, farm opposition or politics fermenting throughout California.
Politics, not funding, drove growth of Spain's high-speed rail
BARCELONA, SPAIN -- Money wasn't a big obstacle when leaders in Spain decided in 1986 to build a high-speed train system.
The nation was in an era of relative prosperity and preparing for a global limelight. In 1992, when Spain launched its first high-speed rail line, Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympics, and World Expo '92 in Seville marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to the Americas.
While control of Spain's government has wobbled between conservative and Socialist parties over the past two decades, the continued expansion of high-speed lines has enjoyed support from both parties and the Spanish public -- and hefty contributions from the European Union.
Farms, cities have cooperative relationship with Spain's high-speed rail
As Spain's high-speed rail system connects major urban centers and smaller provincial capitals, it also runs across fertile agricultural regions. Rail officials say the Spanish government went to great lengths to minimize effects on farms.
High-speed rail officials are expected Thursday to approve a business plan that details how they hope to pay for a proposed passenger train line between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Repeating the mantra "Better, faster and cheaper," Fresno leaders joined California High-Speed Rail Authority officials Monday to unveil a new business plan for the passenger-train project.
Fresno County workers went on strike for three days to protest pay cuts, Fresno's top car thief got probation, and The Bee reported on the impacts of Spain's high-speed rail on urban and rural areas.
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