Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...
is served by highly developed
transport
Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land ( rail and road), water, cable, pipelin ...
infrastructure. Road, rail and air links are vital to maintain the economic position of Madrid as a leading centre of employment, enterprise, trade and tourism, providing effective connections with not only other parts of the region, but also the rest of Spain and Europe as a whole. Three quarters of a million people commute into the city to work,
[''Estructura Economica de le Ciudad de Madrid'']
''Ayuntamiento de Madrid'' (Madrid City Council), August 2013 and these and other local travellers have available a high-capacity metropolitan road network and a well-used
public transport
Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typi ...
system based on the
Metro
Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to:
Geography
* Metro (city), a city in Indonesia
* A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center
Public transport
* Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urb ...
, the ''
Cercanías
The commuter rail systems of Spain's major metropolitan areas are called ''Cercanías'' () in most of Spain, ''Rodalia'' () in the Valencian Community, ''Aldiriak'' () in the Basque Country and ''Rodalies'' () in Catalonia. There are twelve ''Ce ...
'' local railways, and a dense network of bus routes.
In terms of longer-distance transport, Madrid is the central node of the system of ''
autovía
An ''autovía'' is one of two classes of major highway in the Spanish road system similar to a British motorway or an American freeway. It is akin to the autopista, the other major highway class, but has fewer features and is never a toll roa ...
s'' and of the
high-speed rail network (
AVE
''Alta Velocidad Española'' (''AVE'') is a service of high-speed rail in Spain operated by Renfe, the Spanish national railway company, at speeds of up to . As of December 2021, the Spanish high-speed rail network, on part of which the AVE s ...
), which has brought major cities such as Seville and Barcelona within 2.5 hours travel time.
Madrid is also home to the
Madrid-Barajas Airport, the fourth largest airport in Europe.
Madrid's location at the centre of the peninsula makes it a major
logistical
Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...
base.
Local transport
744,000 of the jobs in the city are held by residents of other municipalities, while 242,000 residents in the capital have jobs outside. Thus passenger flows are predominantly into and out of the city centre, although further decentralisation of economic activity to the outskirts is altering this pattern.
From the point of view of
sustainable transport, Madrid has performed well from the compactness of the city centre and middle-to-high-density peripheral nuclei, favouring public transport and pedestrian movement. The weak points appear in the "new peripheries", with low-density residential developments and dispersal of journey destinations, leading to higher car use.
Road
![Mapa m-40 - m-30](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Mapa_m-40_-_m-30.PNG)
The outward expansion of Madrid after 1960 was supported by a growing network of radial roads. Above all these enabled commuter movements to the city centre. It also became necessary to create the first orbital ''
autovía
An ''autovía'' is one of two classes of major highway in the Spanish road system similar to a British motorway or an American freeway. It is akin to the autopista, the other major highway class, but has fewer features and is never a toll roa ...
'', the
M30, which was intended to facilitate the passage of long-distance traffic, but became invaded by local traffic. The scheme implemented at the end of the 1980s consisted of nine radial autovías (those toward Burgos, Barcelona, Valencia, Andalucía, Toledo, Fuenlabrada, Extremadura, A Coruña and Colmenar Viejo) but just the one
orbital route – the M-30. Three further orbital routes, each at a greater distance from the centre, were added in the 1990s and 2000s. These are designated
M40,
M45 and M50.
The most recent big scheme was improvement of the M30. This road is the inner ring motorway of Madrid. Significant portions of M30 run underground and its urban motorway tunnels have sections of more than in length and 3 to 6 lanes in each direction. Between the south entry of the ''Avenida de Portugal'' tunnel and the north exit of the M-30 south by-pass there are close to of continuous tunnels.
M40 is a ring motorway which borders Madrid at a mean distance of and it has a total length of .
M45 is a partial ring around the city serving the
metropolitan area of Madrid
The Madrid metropolitan area is a monocentric metropolitan area in the centre of the Iberian peninsula, around the municipality of Madrid, Spain. It is not related to any sort of administrative delimitation, and thus, its limits are ambiguous.
...
. It was built to help alleviate the congestion of the
M40 from the southern to the north-eastern, runs between the M40 and the M50 where the two ring motorways are more separated. M50 is the outer of the Madrid orbital motorways and has a total length of . It services mainly the metropolitan area at a mean distance of .
The most important radial ''
autovía
An ''autovía'' is one of two classes of major highway in the Spanish road system similar to a British motorway or an American freeway. It is akin to the autopista, the other major highway class, but has fewer features and is never a toll roa ...
s'' of Madrid are:
![M-40-Madrid-km-46](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/M-40-Madrid-km-46.jpg)
More recently, four new radial
tolled ''
autopistas'' (named R-n instead of A-n), listed below, form a new mode of access to the capital, merging with their ''autovía'' counterparts further from Madrid. The main advantage to these roads is that they allow true fast travel from the first kilometer. These, however, have frequently been under-utilised, especially after the
economic crisis of 2008
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At t ...
.
The investment in roads has resulted in a high-capacity metropolitan road network, facilitating communications between the outer municipalities, and resilient against closures due to works or accidents. However, the new orbital roads have favoured the dispersion and fragmentation of residential areas and areas of economic activity, resulting in an array of urban developments separate from each other, and very dependent on private vehicles.
In 2018, Madrilenian roads were the safest in all of Spain with only 18 traffic fatalities per million inhabitants.
Public transport
![008531 - Madrid (9451116317)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/008531_-_Madrid_%289451116317%29.jpg)
Madrid has built up a
public transport
Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typi ...
system, the fruit of long-term policies supporting the extension of the metro and Cercanías networks, the improvement of bus networks, the construction of 28 transport
interchanges
Interchange may refer to:
Transport
* Interchange (road), a collection of ramps, exits, and entrances between two or more highways
* Interchange (freight rail), the transfer of freight cars between railroad companies
* Interchange station, a rai ...
, and subsidies to public transport.
A mobility survey in 2004 counted 14.5M journeys per day in the
region
In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics ( physical geography), human impact characteristics ( human geography), and the interaction of humanity an ...
, of which 10.0M were mechanised. 48.6% of the latter took place entirely within the city, 22.5% started or finished in the city, and 28.9% were entirely outside the city. Public transport was used for 69.1% of journeys within the central area, down to 27.3% in the outer periphery (''corona regional''). Metro accounted for 40% of journeys by public transport, bus 30%, interurban buses 10%, and Cercanías 10%.
More recent figures, for 2013, show passengers carried annually by bus 404M, Metro 563M, Cercanías 153M.
[''Barómetro de Economía de la Ciudad de Madrid'', No. 41]
, ''Ayuntamiento de Madrid'' (Madrid City Council), October 2014 The inner city relies for transport mainly on the Metro and the EMT bus service. As regards the periphery, public transport is based above all on the Cercanías and interurban buses. The metro, too, is extending into parts of the outer area.
Buses
![EMT Castrasua Iveco Irsibus 146](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/EMT_Castrasua_Iveco_Irsibus_146.JPG)
This railway network is supported by an ever-expanding network of city buses. The overall length of the bus network of Madrid's Municipal Transport Corporation (''
Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid
The Empresa Municipal de Transportes de Madrid (also known as EMT Madrid) is the company charged with the planning of public urban transport in the city in Madrid, Spain. The organization is wholly owned by the City Council of Madrid and is a me ...
'', or EMT Madrid) at the end of 2013 stood at , marking a 31% increase over the last eight years. These routes are serviced by a growing fleet of over 3,000 vehicles. The EMT network is very dense, with 217 routes and over 10,000 stops, and almost all the population of the municipality lives within 300m of a bus stop.
The buses in Madrid are the only public transport system available around the clock as the metro network closes down between 2.00 and 6.00 am. The
night buses
Night service, sometimes also known as owl service, refers to the public transport services operated during the night hours. These services are operated, mainly using buses but in certain cases using trams (or streetcars), not including int ...
, also known as "''Buhos''" (Owls), operate from 11.45pm to 6.00am. The heavy traffic in Madrid can in some cases make the city buses a fairly slow form of transportation but the city of Madrid has more than 90 km of special bus and taxi lines to help solve this issue. Buses serving the outer areas are run by 33 private companies, coordinated by the ''
Consorcio Regional de Transportes de Madrid
The Consorcio Regional de Transportes de Madrid (CRTM; literally: ''Regional Consortium of Transportation for Madrid'') is an autonomous body created by Spanish law 5/1985 which is tasked with coordinating the public transport operations across mu ...
''. This network is fundamentally radial.
Metro
![Madrid Metro Map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Madrid_Metro_Map.svg)
Serving a population of some five million, the
Madrid Metro (''Metro de Madrid'') is one of the most extensive and fastest-growing
metro
Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to:
Geography
* Metro (city), a city in Indonesia
* A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center
Public transport
* Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urb ...
networks in the world.
With the addition of a loop serving suburbs to Madrid's south-west called
Metrosur
Line 12, also known as MetroSur (Spanish for ''MetroSouth''), is a line of the Madrid Metro inaugurated on 11 April 2003. Line 12 is a circle line that is not in the city of Madrid, but links five suburban towns south of Madrid, serving around on ...
or Line 12, it is now the second longest metro system in Western Europe after London's
Underground
Underground most commonly refers to:
* Subterranea (geography), the regions beneath the surface of the Earth
Underground may also refer to:
Places
* The Underground (Boston), a music club in the Allston neighborhood of Boston
* The Underground ...
. After numerous extension projects in the early 2000s, it currently consists of of mostly underground railway tracks and a total of 302 stations.
The system is the twelfth longest metro in the world, though Madrid is approximately only the fiftieth most populous metropolitan area in the world. Its fast growth in the last 20 years has put it among the fastest growing networks in the world, on par with the
Shanghai Metro and the
Beijing Subway
The Beijing Subway is the rapid transit system of Beijing Municipality that consists of 25 lines including 20 rapid transit lines, two airport rail links, one maglev line and 2 light rail lines, and 463 stations. The rail network extends acro ...
. Unlike normal Spanish road and rail traffic, Madrid Metro trains use left-hand running on almost all lines due to left-hand traffic being the norm in Madrid until 1924.
The metro network consists of 302 stations. It has 12 lines, one
branch line
A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line.
Industrial spur
An industr ...
and four
Metro Ligero (light metro) tram lines. The network consists of diametrical lines, interconnected by one circular line (
Line 6). It gives good coverage to much of the municipality – about 50% of the population live within 600m of a metro station.
Local rail
![CercaniasMadrid2018](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/CercaniasMadrid2018.png)
Spain's
railway system, the ''Red Nacional de Ferrocarriles Españoles'' (
Renfe) operates the vast majority of Spain's railways.
Cercanías Madrid is the
commuter rail
Commuter rail, or suburban rail, is a passenger rail transport service that primarily operates within a metropolitan area, connecting Commuting, commuters to a Downtown, central city from adjacent suburbs or commuter towns. Generally commuter r ...
service that serves Madrid and its metropolitan area. It is operated by
Cercanías
The commuter rail systems of Spain's major metropolitan areas are called ''Cercanías'' () in most of Spain, ''Rodalia'' () in the Valencian Community, ''Aldiriak'' () in the Basque Country and ''Rodalies'' () in Catalonia. There are twelve ''Ce ...
, the commuter rail division of Renfe. The total length spans . Main rail terminals are
Atocha in the south and
Chamartín in the north. The Cercanías network consists of 9 lines and 98 stations.
Other modes
Madrid has a single
cable car, the
Teleférico de Madrid
The ''Teleférico de Madrid'', or Madrid Cable Car, is a gondola lift in the Spanish capital city of Madrid. It is long and links the Parque del Oeste with the Casa de Campo. The line was built by Von Roll
Von Roll Holding AG is a Swiss indus ...
, which links the
Parque del Oeste with the
Casa de Campo
The Casa de Campo (, for Spanish: ''Country House'') is the largest public park in Madrid. It is situated west of central Madrid, Spain. It gets its name 'Country House' because it was once a royal hunting estate, located just west of the Ro ...
.
The
BiciMAD bike-sharing scheme was introduced in 2014.
Madrid Public Transportation Statistics
The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Madrid, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 62 min. 13% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 11 min, while 13% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 9.5 km, while 25% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.
Long-distance transport
Although distant from other great centres of the EU, modern transport links are lessening this disadvantage. There has been large investment in transport infrastructure focussing on Madrid, including radial ''autovías'', high-speed rail, and Madrid-Barajas airport.
Road
As noted above, Madrid is the focal point of the high-capacity ''autovía'' network, linking it with most parts of the country as well as France and Portugal. The road network is now regarded as largely complete, with attention turning to maintenance and road safety.
High-speed rail
![AVE (5552518597)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/AVE_%285552518597%29.jpg)
Madrid ranks alongside
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...
and
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
as one of the world's three largest high-speed railway hubs, acting as the focal point of the Spanish high-speed rail network, ''Alta Velocidad Española'' (
AVE
''Alta Velocidad Española'' (''AVE'') is a service of high-speed rail in Spain operated by Renfe, the Spanish national railway company, at speeds of up to . As of December 2021, the Spanish high-speed rail network, on part of which the AVE s ...
), inaugurated in 1992 with the opening of the Madrid-Seville line. There are now 2,900 km of AVE track, connecting Madrid with
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
,
Málaga,
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...
,
Valencia
Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...
,
Valladolid
Valladolid () is a municipality in Spain and the primary seat of government and de facto capital of the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. It has a population around 300,000 peop ...
,
Zaragoza
Zaragoza, also known in English as Saragossa,''Encyclopædia Britannica'"Zaragoza (conventional Saragossa)" is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributari ...
and 11 other provincial capitals. A tunnel has been constructed between the two terminal stations of
Atocha and
Chamartín, and Atocha has been expanded. The radial character and great extension of the AVE network confer on Madrid exceptional accessibility by rail: the journey time is only 2 hours 30 minutes to Barcelona and Seville. Connection from Madrid by AVE will further increase due to lines under construction to
Galicia,
Asturias
Asturias (, ; ast, Asturies ), officially the Principality of Asturias ( es, Principado de Asturias; ast, Principáu d'Asturies; Galician-Asturian: ''Principao d'Asturias''), is an autonomous community in northwest Spain.
It is coextensiv ...
,
País Vasco
The Basque Country (; eu, Euskadi ; es, País Vasco ), also called Basque Autonomous Community ( eu, Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoa, links=no, EAE; es, Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco, links=no, CAPV), is an autonomous community of Spain. It ...
,
Alicante
Alicante ( ca-valencia, Alacant) is a city and municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It is the capital of the province of Alicante and a historic Mediterranean port. The population of the city was 337,482 , the second-largest in t ...
,
Murcia
Murcia (, , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, and the seventh largest city in the country. It has a population of 460,349 inhabitants in 2021 (about one ...
and
Extremadura
Extremadura (; ext, Estremaúra; pt, Estremadura; Fala: ''Extremaúra'') is an autonomous community of Spain. Its capital city is Mérida, and its largest city is Badajoz. Located in the central-western part of the Iberian Peninsula, it ...
.
About 23M passengers used the AVE in 2011. AVE has taken a large share of travel on the routes served: since the opening of the line to Seville, journeys by train between the two places increased from 14% to 50%, while air fell from 11% to 4% and road from 75% to 46%.
Rail freight
The
Yiwu - Madrid Railway line
Yiwu () is a county-level city under the jurisdiction of Jinhua in Central Zhejiang Province, East China. As of the 2020 census, the city had 1,859,390 inhabitants and its built-up (or metro) area, joined with that of the neighboring Dongy ...
is the longest cargo goods railway line in the world, at 8,111 miles. It connects the Spanish capital to
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
,
Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
,
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...
and
China.
Air
![Barajas Airport (Madrid) (4685194730)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Barajas_Airport_%28Madrid%29_%284685194730%29.jpg)
Madrid–Barajas Airport (''Aeropuerto de Madrid-Barajas'') is Spain's busiest airport, and is the main
hub of
Iberia Airlines
Iberia (), legally incorporated as ''Iberia Líneas Aéreas de España, S.A. Operadora, Sociedad Unipersonal'', is the flag carrier airline of Spain. Founded in 1927 and based in Madrid, it operates an international network of services from i ...
. Important to the city's economy as the largest business in Madrid, estimated to generate 44,000 jobs directly and 210,000 indirectly,
it serves as the main gateway to the Iberian peninsula from Europe, America and the rest of the world. In 2013 Barajas handled 39.74M passengers (down 20% from a peak of 49.87M in 2011),
Spain AENA Airport Statistics
/ref> of whom 70% were international travellers, in addition to 343.62M tonnes of freight. The passenger volumes make it Spain's largest and busiest airport, and in the same year it was the world's 29th busiest airport and Europe's sixth busiest airport. Airfreight movements through Barajas are 52% those of all Spain, and 83.4% of international air freight. A new fourth terminal has been constructed, which has significantly reduced delays and doubled the capacity of the airport to more than 70 million passengers per year. Two additional runways have also been constructed, making Barajas a fully operational four-runway airport that can handle 120 flights per hour.
The airport is located within the city limits of Madrid, at from the city's financial district and northeast of the Puerta del Sol, Madrid's historic centre. It has good connections with the city centre by ''autovía'', Cercanías and Metro. The airport name derives from the adjacent district of Barajas, which has its own metro station on the same rail line serving the airport.
The closed Ciudad Real Central Airport
Ciudad Real International Airport or CRIA , previously known as ''Central Airport CR'', ''Don Quijote Airport'' and ''South Madrid Airport'', is an international airport and long-storage facility, situated south of Ciudad Real in Spain. Cons ...
was intended to be the second airport for the city, linked to it by high-speed rail.
Bus
Aside from the local and regional bus commuting services, Madrid is also a node for long-distance bus connections to plenty of national destinations. The in Méndez Álvaro, the busiest bus station in the country, also features international bus connections to cities in Morocco
Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria t ...
as well as to diverse European destinations.
Logistical platform
The region concentrates 54% by value of the national transport of goods & logistical operations, employing 122,000. Favoured by central position, radiality of road & rail routes, importance of the airport, As well as being a large centre of production and consumption, it is a great distribution centre. The municipality concentrates two-thirds of the region's employment in the sector, but this is becoming more decentralised. A regional plan seeks to create nine new logistical centres outside the city, in order to decongest the central areas and rationalise distribution chains.
References
{{reflist