The President of the Regional Government, Marga Prohens, today took the first trip on the extended Palma metro from the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) to ParcBit. The only independent metro line (M1) in the Balearic Islands, which has been connecting the university with the Estació Intermodal/Plaça d’Espanya on the outskirts of the city centre on a metre gauge since 2007, now serves 10 stations along its 9.9 km route. The journey time is 15 minutes. From Monday to Friday, the M2 line also offered occasional additional services on the main line of the interurban rail network between Estació Intermodal/Plaça d’Espanya and Marratxi – however, this is not a ‘real’ metro service.
By extending the M1 to the ParcBit business and technology park, local officials hope to increase passenger numbers on the line by 10-15%, which at approximately 2 million per year are undoubtedly modest for a metro service. However, the M1 only runs every 20 minutes from Monday to Friday and every 30 minutes on Saturday mornings.
The new metro infrastructure is 1.4 kilometres long, 1.1 kilometres of which run underground and pass under the access road to ParcBit. The remaining section runs above ground to the new ParcBit station, which is located in car park 5 of the technology park.
The project to extend the Palma metro from the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) to ParcBit required a total investment of 28.9 million euros (+ VAT), of which almost twenty million were financed by funds from the Next Generation EU Plan for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience.
