High-speed route
AVE
Madrid → Valencia · Spain
AVE in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 391 km
- Fastest time
- 1 h 40 min
- Average speed
- 235 km/h
- Top speed
- 300 km/h
- Operator
- Renfe · Ouigo · iryo
- Train
- S-112 “Pato”
- Countries
- Spain
- In service since
- 2010
- Runs
- hourly or better across operators
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Madrid to the Mediterranean paella coast in 100 minutes aboard the duck-nosed “Pato”.
Opened in December 2010, this is the quick way from the capital to the Mediterranean: 391 km in as little as 1 h 40, with the duck-billed S-112 “Pato” sets doing much of the work. The line crosses the emptied heart of Castilla–La Mancha, calling at Cuenca’s field-side Fernando Zóbel station below the hanging houses, then drops through the Utiel-Requena wine plateau to the orange coast. Since liberalisation, Ouigo and iryo undercut and out-style each other on the same rails.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 1374671 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 6 m from it
- Checked against the running timetable via ÖBB Scotty: our line sits 0.1 km from the shape of IR 17191
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- La Mancha emptiness at 300 km/h
- Cuenca — gateway to the hanging houses
- Utiel-Requena vineyards
- Turia basin descent
- Joaquín Sorolla terminal
More high-speed routes
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Scheduled at 310 km/h, Europe’s fastest timetable, this line flipped one of the world’s busiest air routes to rail.
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More train routes in Spain.
Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Madrid → Valencia · Valencia → Madrid.