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The Train in Spain

Posted by: Tim Halbur

21 April 2009 - 10:00am

By the end of the year, Spain is on course to have a more extensive high-speed rail system than both Japan and France. The system is changing hearts and minds across this usually home-bound nation.

"The growth of the Alta Velocidad Española, or AVE, high-speed rail network is having a profound effect on life in Spain. Many Spaniards are fiercely attached to their home regions and studies show they are unusually reluctant to live or even travel elsewhere.

But those centuries-old habits are starting to change as Spain stitches its disparate regions together with a €100 billion ($130 billion) system of bullet trains designed to traverse the countryside at up to 218 miles an hour.

"We Spaniards didn't used to move around much," says José María Menéndez, who heads the civil engineering department at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. "Now I can't make my students sit still for one second. The AVE has radically changed this generation's attitude to travel.""

Full Story: Spain's Bullet Train Changes Nation -- and Fast
Source: The Wall St. Journal, April 20, 2009
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