The Spanish region of Valencia is still struggling to deal with the aftermath of the devastating disaster, which caused heavy rainfall and subsequent flooding at the end of October 2024 and, among many other things, led to considerable destruction of the infrastructure. One of the immediate consequences was the complete suspension of all rail services on the afternoon of 29 October 2024, including the tram, metro and Cercanías commuter train services.
The municipal administration gradually set up bus lines to cover the main routes as a replacement. Buses from various parts of Spain were brought to Valencia to help.
The gradual reopening
Tram services on the four lines 4, 6, 8 and 10 resumed on 9 November. The metro has been fully operational again since 3 December on lines 3 (Aeroport-Rafelbunyol), 5 (Aeroport-Marítim) and 9 (Riba roja de Tùria – Alboraia Peris Aragó), lines 1 and 2 from the north terminate at Placa de Espanya, line 7 from Marítim terminates at Sant Isidre station. In January 2025, the lines also reached the Valencia Sud junction again.
The most severely affected southern line of the metro, from Valencia Sud via Torrente to Castelló, which had emerged from a former interurban local line, is currently still out of service. Here, the overhead lines, power supply, station facilities and, in several places, the track systems have had to be extensively renewed or even completely rebuilt. Commissioning is therefore not expected for at least 2 months.
The depot and workshop facilities and the entire operations control centre at Valencia Sud are also badly damaged; all metro trains are operated from the second depot in Machado. In any case, only a bit more than half of the fleet is operational. 20 trains from the metro’s fleet of 64 vehicles were damaged to varying degrees by the storm and the masses of water and have to be repaired before entering service again. A further 8 trains are ‘trapped’ on the damaged, disconnected southern section of the network. The damage to the numerous museum carriages – trams, buses, trolleybuses and suburban trains from Valencia – that were stored in the Torrent depot, which was closed years ago, is not yet foreseeable. Their fate is still open. The suburban train lines C1, C2 and C3 in the Valencia area, which are operated by the state-owned RENFE, resumed operations on 22 December 2024.
Considering the extent of the destruction and the scale of the work required to restore services to pre-crash levels, the efforts of Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (FGV) as operator can only be applauded. There is still a lot to be done, but it should not be forgotten that people in the affected areas are still a long way from normality in other areas of daily life, and external support – including donations from private individuals – is still useful and necessary.
The costs for the complete restoration of all facilities and installations are estimated at EUR 125 million. Around EUR 70 million of this comes from the EUR 100 million approved around two years ago to expand the infrastructure in order to implement service improvements that were decided some time ago. There will therefore be some delays here.
And to make matters worse, on 28 April 2025, there was the country-wide blackout which lasted for hours and, of course, affected the Valencia metro and tram, too – leading to broken-down trains and the evacuation of passengers throughout the network.
Vehicle fleet renewal
Stadler is currently building 16 seven-carriage low-floor trains (+ option 10) for the tram, which are needed for the planned line extensions, among other things (see here: https://www.urban-transport-magazine.com/en/order-confirmed-new-trams-for-valencia-and-alicante/ ). Construction of the two new lines T11 and T12 is expected to start in 2026. The extension of the T10 line, which will finally open in 2022 after many years of standstill, from the current, inconveniently located Alacant terminus in the tunnel further into the historic city centre, on the other hand, will take even longer, as the necessary funds are not available in the budget for the time being.
In contrast to the tram, there are no plans to expand the metro fleet in the current environment. And this is despite the fact that the Metro’s capacity utilisation is not only at its limit during the ‘classic’ rush hours. Passenger numbers have increased significantly compared to pre-COVID levels, not least due to the free travel granted for several years. In 2024, 105 million passengers used the city’s tram and metro lines, which is a significant increase even compared to 2023 – and this despite the fact that services have been significantly restricted since the end of October and were completely suspended for some time!
Despite this situation, the trains of the Metro 3900 series, which have been parked for around 10 years, have all been gradually scrapped since November. This means that they were only in service for a total of 17-19 years, and the subsequently added centre sections for only 11-12 years. The cost of recommissioning would undoubtedly be high, but this would have made it possible to provide a significantly improved service on the metro network in a more manageable time.
