The Metropolitan Transport Authority has definitively approved the project to complete the tram connection along Barcelona's Diagonal avenue, in the section that remains pending between Francesc Macià and Verdaguer. The action will allow linking the Trambaix and the Trambesòs along 2.8 kilometers in one of the city's main corridors.
The approval affects the civil work necessary to lay the tracks and erect the rest of the tram infrastructure in this sector of Diagonal. The planned route incorporates three new stops, Diagonal Cinc d"Oros, Balmes and Casanova, in addition to a new electric traction station in Francesc Macià.
A key stretch to link the two networks
The project resolves the missing section to unite the two tram networks that currently operate separately in Barcelona. In the space comprised between Passeig de Gràcia and Via Augusta, the tracks will share a platform with TMB buses, one of the singularities foreseen in this phase of the connection.
The budget for the civil works amounts to 47.3 million euros without VAT. The estimated duration of the works is 40 months, although for now there is no fixed date for the start of the works.
The execution remains pending of the political and budgetary calendar
The start of the works will largely depend on the approval of the new budgets of the Generalitat. That factor conditions the calendar of an intervention that has been on the table for years and that now already has the definitive approval of the board of directors of the metropolitan body.
In parallel, the Barcelona City Council definitively approved in March the Diagonal reurbanization project. That municipal action will be executed once the tram tracks have been laid in the pending section, so that both interventions remain linked in the future transformation of this axis between Francesc Macià and Verdaguer.