The Administration is contributing €600,000 to the logistics operation. The aim is to reduce road traffic, promote intermodal transport between companies in Burgos and improve sustainability. The first train left in July.

Source: El Correo de Burgos

‘Reducing road traffic, promoting intermodal transport and improving sustainability.’ That is the objective of the agreement signed between Burgos City Council and Logística Multimodal Castilla y León, with a budget of €600,000.

The agreement, which will last for six months or until the budgeted amount is used up, has enabled the implementation of a multi-client train from Burgos to the Port of Valencia to transport goods, reduce costs and expand Burgos’ logistics.

‘A year ago, we began discussions on this initiative, which aims to promote rail transport for companies in Burgos,’ said the Mayor of Burgos, Cristina Ayala, after signing the agreement. ‘Burgos is a purely industrial city and, in addition to the work in the sector, the City Council also wants to support logistics.’

In this way, the Burgos City Council becomes the first city council to ‘allocate a budget to promote and improve the logistics of its city,’ said the mayor, who did not want to fail to call for ‘the launch of the Madrid-Aranda-Burgos Direct Train for goods.’ ‘The province needs it because Burgos is an industrial powerhouse and also aspires to be a logistics powerhouse.’

The initial commitment is that two Burgos-Valencia and Valencia-Burgos trains will run each week. The first train departed last July, and for six months this initiative will become ‘a pilot test’ that ‘will give it visibility’ and ‘encourage other companies and manufacturers to commit to it, spreading this type of transport throughout Burgos’s industry.’

Juan Carlos Martín, director of the Burgos Transport Centre and Multimodal Logistics Castile and León, expressed a similar view. ‘This agreement allows us to support Burgos companies and their logistics flows to boost local industry.’

The fact is that ‘imports and exports are key to the sector and to the growth of industry in the province of Burgos,’ he said, while pointing out that ‘intermodality contributes to sustainability in transport.’

As things stand, over the coming months ‘we will gauge interest in this train and study the possibility of increasing the number of routes from two to three per week through sustained growth,’ Martín said.

For the moment, the balance sheet for these two months of operation is positive, although it is true that ‘the Valencia-Burgos train has worked better than the reverse,’ said the city’s mayor. In this regard, she pointed out that ‘we thought it would be the other way around because of the significant export weight of the province of Burgos.’

Now ‘it is time to strike a balance between imports and exports because, in order to be profitable, the train has to return from Valencia full,’ added Martín. The aim is for this mode of transport to become established among companies in Burgos so that it becomes stable over time.