COLD START:
I am lucky to have good friends in Valencia, so whenever I can and my schedule allows it, I escape there to spend a weekend and enjoy the good sunshine and its wonderful paellas and rice dishes. Yes, one more from Madrid in the Valencian community. We have a bad reputation, and not without reason, because during the past Easter holidays one of the most congested roads and with the most traffic was the A3. It is what it is… for a reason they call it the beach of Madrid.
I admit that I am a bit of a nosy and not infrequently I like to investigate how the traffic is. Not only in my city, but also on other Spanish roads and even in the rest of the world, because more than once I have been amazed by the number of kilometers stuck in cities like New York or Paris, to give two examples ( you can see it simply by activating the ‘Traffic’ function in Google Maps).
The fact is that this time I have seen the bulls from the sidelines. Thanks to? To the high-speed train and its prices. No one who knows me will doubt how much I enjoy getting behind the wheel and driving. It does not matter the hours and the type of road (if it is with many curves, the better, but I can hold the type very well on the boring highways).
But everything has a limit and nobody likes to be stuck in a traffic jam, so I decided to go to one of the many operators that cover the Madrid-Valencia route. And this is when the surprises begin. I was not particularly farsighted, so I bought the tickets two weeks before and even so I found a price for the first leg of only 19 euros and the return leg of 35. In total, 54 euros round trip.
54 euros round trip in a Madrid-Valencia taking less than 2 hours each way! Gentlemen, what do we do now? With these prices, the competitiveness of the car is very touched. Even doing accounts with the cars that spend less, as we did with this comparison of hybrid cars that consume less, the numbers come out.
A good friend of mine, who came to Valencia from Zaragoza and then went back by car to Madrid, told me about his continuous stops on the Cheste straight, just outside Valencia, and in Saélices, while I was quietly listening to music at 300 km/h arriving long before him, having left long before me.
Obviously, my case is clear (I was traveling alone, I was going to the center of Valencia and not to a town, etc…) Surely, in the case of a whole family traveling, the train is more expensive… But even so, we would have to consider whether it compensates or not the issue of comfort, because I assure you that by car you will always arrive more tired.
AN IDLE REFLECTION:
Having said that, the issue of car sales comes to mind again and it seems that 2023 is not going badly (car sales will not recover until 2030). But of course, if it is increasingly difficult to enter cities with your car (not just because of the restrictions on DGT labels: Everything you need to know about DGT Labels in 2023: how to use them, limitations, where to get them …), also because more and more surface parking spaces are being removed (the garages are rubbing their hands) and it is not possible to find a free place to leave the car.
I still do not understand the desire of many ‘cochophobic’ mayors to eliminate what has always been a symbol of freedom of movement and prosperity (for all the industry and GDP that moves our country).
