Spain continues efforts to develop rolling highways

The Spanish infrastructure manager Adif launched a tender for the adaptation of the Zaragoza-Tarragona railway to enable it to carry out rolling highway services. The project entails work on six tunnels and 16 overpasses along the line, which will be adapted to fit the P400 profile of semi-trailers.

At the end of 2023, Spain also decided to upgrade the rail sidings between Zaragoza and Tarragona to accommodate 750-metre freight trains. Once upgraded, the Zaragoza-Tarragona line will be the extension of the Algeciras-Zaragoza rolling highway service, Adif specified.

Rolling highways in Spain

For the Algeciras-Zaragoza, the Spanish IM is currently working on adapting 43 tunnels and 131 overpasses for the transit of semi-trailers, an investment of about 468 million euros. The grand opening of the Algeciras-Zaragoza rolling highway service was expected for the of this year, but it was recently delayed indefinitely due to lack of rolling stock and the necessary infrastructure upgrades.

Other than Algeciras-Zaragoza and Zaragoza-Tarragona, Adif is exploring the possibility of implementing rolling highway services along 13 more routes. One of them, connecting Madrid with Valencia, became operational a couple of weeks ago. This is the first rolling highway service beginning and ending in Spain, as all the other ones so far linked Barcelona with France.