Port of Barcelona Receives Railway Access Works Valued at 22.6 Million Euros

The Port of Barcelona has formalized the partial reception of two key projects in the construction of new railway accesses and the Nou Llobregat Terminal, a strategic infrastructure to improve the railway connectivity of the port area.

Specifically, the works corresponding to the projects "New railway access. Access and reception-dispatch tracks in Nou Llobregat. Affected services and ground consolidation", with an investment of 16.4 million euros, and "New Railway Access. Access and reception-dispatch tracks in Nou Llobregat. Civil Works Phase 1", with an amount of 5.7 million euros, were received.

Both actions are part of the European Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (RRM) program and are an important step towards making the new accesses to the Port of Barcelona a reality, as they provide the foundation upon which the railway superstructure will be built and reorganize all existing services in the area. Specifically, the planned actions are:

• The construction of the platform on which the two branches will be installed, connecting the new southern railway access - which is being developed by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda - with the rest of the port's internal railway network and the reception and dispatch terminal of the future Nou Llobregat Railway Complex, consisting of five tracks in the East terminal and four in the West.
• The relocation of all existing services (electricity, communications, water, etc.) in this space.
• The construction of the general drainage box located under the railway platform.
• The construction of the railway superstructure for the Nou Llobregat reception-dispatch tracks and the general tracks of the railway loop in the East terminal, up to its connection, at its southern end, with the existing railway platform accessing the Prat dock and with the start of the future branch towards the South breakwater.

In turn, the reception and validation of track devices worth half a million euros, which must be incorporated into the ongoing works of the project "New Railway Access. Access and reception-dispatch tracks in Nou Llobregat. Civil Works Phase 1", is also planned.

This action provides continuity to previous works, such as the partial reception in July of last year of a first phase of ground consolidation valued at 9.7 million euros, which allowed the civil works currently underway to begin.

Likewise, the project incorporates relevant environmental measures, such as the installation, in 2021, of a visual and acoustic screen to protect nesting bird colonies at the mouth of the Llobregat River, which involved an investment of 1.27 million euros.

In total, the actions linked to the railway development of Nou Llobregat currently amount to an investment of 33.6 million euros, fully financed through European NextGenerationEU funds via the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.