Low fare, high-speed train (AVE) company Ouigo was due to start operating on the Madrid-Alicante line yesterday (Thursday), with one-way tickets from as little as €9.
The company, an affiliate of French national public rail SNCF, is putting on two services per day in each direction, with 509 seats in double-decker carriages on its standard trains, which can be extended to double that capacity if required.
Since October, Ouigo has been running three daily return services between Madrid and Valencia, and with the line via Albacete to Alicante completes the five per day (10 in each direction) that it signed up to serve the Valencia region with state rail infrastructure agency Adif.
The AVE came to Alicante just over 10 years ago with the service to Madrid run by public rail company Renfe, which after a decade added its own low-fare Avlo service on March 27 and now offers a total of 28 daily return services, including AVE and Avlo.
Ouigo opened its first line, from Madrid to Barcelona stopping in Zaragoza and Tarragona, in May 2021, making it Renfe’s first private competitor following the liberalisation of high-speed passenger train services in Spain.
Full report in Friday’s Costa Blanca News
