Train pain for users of Denia- Alicante service

COMMUTERS between Dénia and Alicante will have to carry on using the bus replacement service until at least the beginning of 2022, the regional rail board has revealed.

According to FGV, it will take all next year before the train track between Teulada and Dénia is completely rebuilt.

Before this, the line between Gata de Gorgos and Teulada needs to be totally reconstructed, and the northernmost stretch on what is known as Line 9 of the Alicante outer suburban rail network will be the last to come into operation.

Another stumbling block is the Pont del Quisi bridge in Benissa, where track rebuilding has been delayed several times for various reasons, including lockdown, and indecision as to whether to redirect it somewhere else and how this would affect the trains.

The new rolling stock purchased for the Alicante- Marina train – confusingly known by its acronym T. R. A. M – are hybrid diesel- electric and are larger and heavier than the ones used prior to the line’s shutdown in summer 2016.

FGV believes the El Quisi bridge would be unable to bear their weight.

Rail infrastructure board representatives say they ‘ would not like to put an exact date on’ when the complete Dénia- Alicante line might be up and running again, but hope that if ‘ everything goes according to plan’, it could be around the beginning of 2022.

By then, the bus replacement service will have been in operation for five- and- a- half years.