After long years of waiting, the arrival of the AVE to Galicia from Madrid is scheduled for next December. However, the new itinerary will not be fully operational until next summer, when trains with the capacity to reach speeds of 330 km / h will be put into operation.
This December, Renfe reports in a statement, the completion of the works on the High Speed Line to Ourense is scheduled, current services will cut their travel times with Madrid. Between Ourense and Madrid the times will be reduced to 1 hour and 28 minutes, the Vigo and Pontevedra trains will cut their current times by 54 minutes, Santiago will reduce the travel time by 1 hour and 4 minutes, A Coruña 1 hour and 3 minutes, while that Lugo shortened in 57 minutes the duration of the trip.
In this way, the best travel times with Madrid will be as follows:
- Ourense-Madrid: 2:15 a.m.
- Vigo-Madrid: 4:16 h
- Pontevedra-Madrid: 4:00 a.m.
- Santiago-Madrid: 3:20 h
- A Coruña-Madrid: 3:51 a.m.
- Lugo-Madrid: 4:46 am
In a second phase, scheduled for next summer, Renfe expects to reduce the times on the previous list by 20 more minutes. This will be possible thanks to the arrival of Talgo’s 106 series trains, known as Avril. These variable gauge trains were awarded in November 2016 by Renfe and allow maximum commercial speeds of 330 kilometers per hour.
These trains are already running in the testing phase and are scheduled to enter service in Galicia next summer. At that time the travel times between Galicia and Madrid will be around an hour and a half lower than the current ones.
