The expert that you quote from El Pais says the following :-

"Tardienta has a population of just 1,000 people, but yet it has a high-speed train station. Is this the model that will connect up Spain and make it prosperous?".

Tardienta is a major junction where lines from Huesca, Zaragoza, Lleida, Pamplona and the AVE all meet up, and although it is in the middle of nowhere, is an obvious place to put an interchange station.

The 1000 people that live there, are probably only there to clear and work the points.

Very, very misleading of the writer and makes you wonder what other facts in the article have been "massaged".

You conveniently omit to mention that "there are days when no one boards the train at Tardienda".

Not a bad massager yourself eh.

Doesn,t sound like a very busy interchange to me or there again maybe a typical Ave interchange,depending how you look at it.

The actual quote is "There are days when nobody boards the AVE at Guadalajara or Tardienta in Huesca", Dick.

I've already stitched up your expert for making Tardienta out to be a tin pot village when it is in fact a major junction, and there is no way he or anybody can be there all day watching cross-platform activity, AVE or local line. So the only thing he can quote is the ticket sales in the station ticket office which will be zero on some (most) days.

The wording states that no one boards a train, not that no one buys a ticket.
Not exactly rocket science to check it out.
We're it a fraction as busy as in your imagination it would surely be the simplest thing in the world to spot just one person boarding a train.

I wonder if the already closed lines and abandoned stations are also just figments of the imagination, yet strangely I have yet to see anyone in denial.

You quite sure you weren't in the banking business at one time, I mean maybe it could easily also have slipped your mind.

By the way I watched a Spanish news clip showing one of these brand new unused stations only last week.
The reporter and camera crew were the only ones at the station as the Ave pulled in.

Beside the point Dick.

"There are days when nobody boards the AVE at Guadalajara or Tardienta in Huesca. Tardienta has a population of just 1,000 people, but yet it has a high-speed train station. Is this the model that will connect up Spain and make it prosperous?".

Your expert is implying that a high-speed station was built for 1000 people.

Tardienta is in a narrow valley and all lines must run parallel, as must the AVE.

As such they all have to go through the existing station at Tardienta, which already was an interchange station. The AVE must go there too, there is nowhere else for the AVE to go.

The existing station now has high-speed trains stopping at the original station (because it makes a good interchange) which makes it, I suppose, a high-speed station.

But no new 'high-speed station' has been built for 1000 people.

Therefore your expert's credibility is blown sky-high.

It doesn't matter a jot how many people get on and off.

Doesn't change the fact that most Spanish are saying the same stuff as Dick has posted. The only ones seem to be defending it are a few ex-pats

J2 claiming to speak for "most Spanish"...

I wonder if the workers at the Talgo factories are for or against train investments. It seems to have paid off handsomely in terms of exports/jobs in their case

http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/b...expansion.html

I seriously think you need medical treatment

A better example of "Projection" I haven't seen in recent days...

I think that 'most Spanish' have a secret or not so secret pride in the project. Didn't you have pride in the ruinously expensive Concorde and the Olympic Games ?

People keep on saying that the money is “wasted”, “poured into a black hole” or “down the plug-hole”. But the money doesn’t just vanish into thin air (obviously it being Spain, some of it does).

Have you ever sat down and worked out where it actually goes ?

First off the Government pays a firm to, say, build the AVE lines. The firm will make a profit on the deal and it will pay corporation tax to the taxman. The owners of the firm will also get dividends from the project and they will pay income tax on it (to the taxman). The rest of the money will be spent getting the thing done.

The contractor will pay a lot of people to move the scenery out of the way of the AVE and will pay them for doing so. The employees will take the money and will pay income tax and some form of NI to the tax man. They will then spend that money in shops and pay VAT. The shopkeepers will pay themselves and pay income tax and NI and VAT (to the taxman) when they spend the money.

The firm will also buy rails from the steel plants who will pay their workers and suppliers for coal and iron ore, etc, etc, etc, and it’s all subject to tax.

So you see, all the money the government spends, sloshes around in peoples’ bank accounts, and every time it changes bank account, the Spanish Chancellor dips his bread.

And if you add up all the tax on all the transactions of all the money the government has spent, you find that the government gets nearly all of it back, or at the very least they get a very, very cheap train set.

On top of all that, comes the savings from not having to pay out unemployment benefit for all the workers in the chain.

The main trick though, is to get all the tax back. This is done particularly well in Britain, so much so, it is thought, that George Osbourne, having got so much more back from the 6.8 billion than he ploughed into the Olympic Games, is desperately seeking ways of having the Olympics in London EVERY year.

The problems begin when the equipment and labour is sourced from overseas which is what the UK government do on most occasions.

Much the same with Ave, the trains were designed and developed in other countries and the parts to build them are sourced from other countries so I can hardly imagine Spanish technicians having a clue how to put all the bits together without assistance and advice from the various foreign companies involved.

Pales into insignificance when compared to picking up a hill in the way and dumping it in a canyon also in the way. That's where the costs are.

No comparison with the Olympics.
Far from everyone agreed or took great pride in the country being awarded the games and at the end of the day it was more a case of relief rather than dancing in the streets that it mostly went down reasonably well.
Many of the facilities and accomodation were wisely planned with further use in mind and no doubt many have benefited.
However apart from Osbournes point of view and those close enough to grab a piece of the action, I think the jury is still out with regard to benefits for the population as a whole.

Now lets take your line of logic a little further with regard to the AVE Fiasco.
Let's make Spain the richest country in Europe by all insisting that every tiny village and outlying community throughout the land should have an Ave service.
Lets build railroads through mountains like that fine example in Asturias,, over ravines and rivers and new stations at the end of every farmers driveway

For instance I'd like a station at the end of my street if it's going to be the answer to all the countries financial problems. I might only use it on rare occasions or maybe never at all, but what's that matter in the greater scheme of things if it's going to make the govt and consequently the country one of the richest in the World ?

Magic eh, problem solved, now why on earth didn't somone think of that before, rather than having the whole damned country going through all this pain and suffering of not being able to make ends meet. ?

Ah ! Were it only so Dick.

However you have to spend money on other things, like changing little old ladies butano bottles(mentioned on this thread), and helping the unemployed, the sick, and the defenceless.

You have to strike a balance between capital spending (building the AVE) and current spending (helping people).

You can't have one without the other, but where that balance lies ? Well that is what politics is all about.

Valid point, Dick.