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Diario Euskadi

High-Speed Train to Arrive Directly in Bilbao, Provisional Basauri Station Discarded

The Basque and central governments, along with Bilbao City Council, have redesigned the HSR access, opting for a temporary stop next to Abando terminal.

Generic image of a modern high-speed train station interior, with contemporary design.
IA

Generic image of a modern high-speed train station interior, with contemporary design.

The Basque and central governments, together with Bilbao City Council, have announced a redesign of the High-Speed Rail access to the city, discarding the idea of a provisional station in Basauri and opting for direct arrival in Bilbao via a temporary stop next to the Abando terminal.

The project to bring high-speed rail to Bilbao has taken another turn. The central and Basque governments, along with the City Council, announced on Monday morning a redesign of the macro-plan they have been working on for five years to build the HSR access to the city and bury Abando station. The new roadmap still does not set a specific inauguration date, but it buries the idea of executing a temporary station in Basauri and opts for trains to arrive directly in the Vizcayan capital from day one.
The institutions are thus recovering an alternative that was already on the table at the beginning of the century and are discarding the extravagant option of Basauri. In 2021, the then Minister of Transport announced that for the Basque 'Y' to become operational within a reasonable period, it was not possible to wait for the 6-kilometer tunnel that would take the HSR from Malmasin to Bilbao and the burial of Abando to be completed. The first project will not be finished until the middle of the next decade, and the second could go beyond 2040.
The option found was to build a temporary stop in Basauri, on an already constructed viaduct that crosses the Nervión and the Cercanías line coming from Orduña. The station was even sketched out, and the plan was for passengers to alight from the HSR on the bridge, 15 meters high, and descend by elevators to a station that would be built on a lower level where they could board a Cercanías train or special shuttles. This was the plan for a period of at least eight years.
The idea is now changing. The complexity of the work, its cost – more than 100 million euros – the demands of the Basauri City Council regarding the organization of access to the stop, and the prospect of Bilbao being the only Basque capital without direct HSR access for years, have led to a reformulation of the Abando project. A similar idea to that of Vitoria will be applied, where high-speed rail will also initially arrive at surface level while the station is being buried.
The new protocol opts for executing a provisional station in an area adjacent to the current Abando station: the workshop area – which will indeed be moved to the Basauri area – located closer to Bailén Street. Trains will arrive using the final section of the Cercanías line while the definitive access tunnel is built and Abando is transformed. According to the project on which the engineering firm Idom has been working for several years and which has not yet been definitively approved – nor its budget, which will exceed 1,000 million euros – the new station will have two underground floors: short and medium-distance trains will arrive at -1, and high-speed trains at -2. Above both, a brand new distributor will be built, crowned by the historic stained-glass window.
The decision was announced during an appearance at Bilbao City Hall, attended by the mayor, the Secretary of State for Transport, the president of Adif, and the Basque Minister of Mobility. These institutions signed an agreement five years ago to co-finance the burial works. 50% will be paid by the State and the other by the Basque institutions. The Provincial Council now wants to join this pact.

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