The Spanish Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility has offered the Community of Madrid to take over the completion of the works to extend the Cercanías network to Navalcarnero, following a meeting between Minister Óscar Puente and the mayor of the town, José Luis Adell.
The proposal, sent by letter to the regional president, includes initiating a feasibility study, for which the Community is required to provide information on the state in which the works were paralysed in 2010.
This infrastructure, planned initially as an extension of the C-5 line from Móstoles, was left unfinished fifteen years ago due to technical and financial difficulties. The work was awarded by the Community of Madrid in 2007 and stopped just three years later, with more than 140 million euros invested and a large part of the route already completed, including a tunnel boring machine abandoned in the middle of the new tunnel.
The Ministry considers it a priority to reactivate this project, which could benefit more than 35,000 inhabitants of Navalcarnero and other municipalities in southwestern Madrid, such as Cenicientos, Sevilla la Nueva, and Navas del Rey, within a corridor of demographic expansion.
Puente emphasised the State’s willingness to assume the cost and execution of the remaining work, provided that there is institutional collaboration, and requested that the Community of Madrid give the necessary data to resume the procedures.
For his part, Mayor Adell thanked the central government for its involvement in an infrastructure described as “vital” for the region. At the same time, the Community of Madrid has demanded that the responsibility fall on the State, which has competence over Cercanías.