Urban Planning, Ecological Transition, Urban Services and Housing

The City Council is seeing to every citizen's right to sustainable, safe, fair and efficient travel anywhere in the city. The two networks’ connection represents a clear commitment to environmental and mobility improvements, seeing that they will be working together in the fight against environmental pollution, enabling public transport travel throughout the city and improving everyone's quality of life. Trams are a form of transport that does not pollute the air and which makes less noise than combustion vehicles; rail travel consumes 10 times less energy per weight than tyres; and it occupies less public space than other forms of public transport, as trams have larger passenger capacities than buses.

That is why preliminary studies were commissioned at the end of 2015 to analyse connection alternatives to the two current networks (Trambaix and Trambesòs) and the implications that would come with that from social, economic and environment points of view. Drafted by over 50 professionals, the technical studies concluded that the alternative that responds best to the various parameters assessed is the ground-level tram connection in Av Diagonal, along the section between Francesc Macià and Glòries, which would carry a total of 222,000 daily passengers and cut by 12,500 the number of vehicles passing along the central stretch of Av Diagonal.

It needs to be borne in mind that Av Diagonal is the city’s structural hub, a main road that is currently undersized on its public transport level and which has not been endowed with the high-capacity service seen in the metro or Rodalies [local commuter train lines]. That is why it is a priority to reduce the number of private vehicles and to strengthen and expand public transport. Trams will enable connections to a good part of the metropolitan area with most high-capacity interchanges passing through Barcelona (metro, FGC, Rodalies), besides connecting to the orthogonal bus network.

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