Cercanías Madrid rail services will add a new station to their network in the near future. The Railway Infrastructure Administrator (Adif) has initiated the necessary administrative procedures to build a new stop in the heart of the capital, less than two kilometers from Puerta del Sol. The new station bears the provisional name of “Imperial”, in reference to the neighborhood in which it will be located, located between the Manzanares River and the Ronda de Segovia.
To carry it out, the manager of the railway network has put out a tender for a contract of 1.9 million euros that will allow the drafting of the necessary projects for its construction. The deadlines set in the specifications delay the start of the works until, at the earliest, the year 2026, to which we will then have to add the time necessary to build the cavern and the station entrances.
Leverage existing infrastructure
The new stop will be located between the Príncipe Pío and Pirámides stations, specifically at the intersection of Paseo de los Melancólicos with Jemenuño and Ruy González de Clavijo streets in the Arganzuela district. Adif seeks to take advantage of the existing infrastructure of the so-called “Green Railway Corridor”, through which the Cercanías lines C-1 and C-10 circulate, to open a hole in the tunnel and provide service to the area.
This neighborhood was developed between the eighties and nineties as a result of the burying of the old contour track that linked the old Delicias and Norte stations (today Príncipe Pío). The coverage of the railway infrastructure made it possible to recover obsolete industrial areas – including freight stations dedicated to the movement of coal -, convert them into buildings of various heights and integrate them into the urban fabric of the center of Madrid, giving rise to a completely residential area.
Improve the public transport offer in the area
The public company, calculating in previous studies commissioned by the Ministry of Transportation, justifies its construction because the neighborhood is located in an area “not very accessible to public transportation.” The area, located between the banks of the Manzanares and the Basilica of San Francisco el Grande, suffers from a complex orography, with elevation differences of up to 70 meters between the highest and lowest area that prevent it from being explored comfortably and lengthen the routes. . of the bus lines.
The Imperial station was first proposed in 1999, when Renfe and the Madrid Regional Transport Consortium developed a joint study to build 16 new Cercanías stations in the then existing network. Between 2017 and 2020, the public company Ineco studied the potential of launching this new stop, concluding that it would have a potential for influx of travelers similar to that of its adjacent Pirámides, with about 10,000 daily users.
The deadlines set by Adif contemplate two years from the award of the contract to develop the feasibility study and the basic and construction projects of the halt, which already extends the necessary procedures until 2026. From then on the work can begin , during which time the company awarded the current contract must also be responsible for supervising and supporting whoever is awarded the construction of the stop.
Improvement plan for Cercanías Madrid
This new announcement joins other works previously promised by the Government now in office and which is already underway through Adif. The most notable, both in terms of quantity and the symbolic nature of his works, are the extensions of the Chamartín and Puerta de Atocha stations. Both are adapting their facilities to the new era of high speed in Spain, something from which the Cercanías network will also benefit indirectly.
This investment plan also contemplates the expansion of line C-4 from Colmenar Viejo to Soto del Real; the construction of new stations in Parla Norte and Tres Cantos Norte; the remodeling of Móstoles-El Soto, Alcalá de Henares and a good part of the C-5 line; the quadrupling of roads between Pinar de las Rozas and Las Matas; or the renewal of line C-9 between Cercedilla and Cotos.
