Rail or bus lane: eight transport models for the Canaries to 2050

Four decisions, eight variants

The draft assigns 48 measures to three subsystems: external mobility, mobility between the islands and mobility within an island, plus four cross-cutting ones. Only five measures come in two versions, bundled into four independent decisions. The pattern is the same throughout: option 1 gets more out of what already exists; option 2 builds new. Alternative A takes option 1 everywhere, H option 2 everywhere. The Documento Inicial Estratégico describes them in deliberately neutral terms: assessing alternatives is not its task — that comes only in the Estudio Ambiental Estratégico and in the Versión Inicial of the plan.

Rail or bus lane — the most expensive question

Measures M29 and M33 are decided jointly, according to the Documento Inicial Estratégico, and this is where the largest sums sit. Option 1 relies on reserved BUS-VAO lanes in the main corridors and express guaguas designed to compete with the car on journey time. Option 2 plans a railway network: on Tenerife a Santa Cruz–Adeje corridor with an extension of the tram, on Gran Canaria a Las Palmas–Maspalomas corridor, plus feasibility studies for Lanzarote and Fuerteventura.

The figures are quoted in the draft from the island plan PIMSIT. The Tren del Sur would run 79.7 kilometres, 22.1 of them in tunnel, with an estimated 67,600 riders a day and around 2.333 billion euros. The Tren del Norte would run 36 kilometres, six million riders a year, around 1.153 billion euros. The weakest case is the Tren del Oeste Icod–Adeje: under 1,000 riders a day for an estimated 1.4 billion euros, because it would run mostly in tunnel.

Runways, Fonsalía and the ferries

The airport decisions M1 and M16 separate optimisation from new build. Option 1 seeks better use through spread operating hours and larger aircraft; the draft lists Tenerife North at 104.6 percent, Lanzarote at 96.6 and El Hierro at 92 as technically saturated. Option 2 builds one new runway each at Tenerife South and Gran Canaria — which, the Documento Inicial Estratégico says, would each require its own environmental assessment. On the sea link to the western islands, option M21-1, reorganising the approaches to the port of Los Cristianos, stands against M21-2, a new harbour at Fonsalía near Guía de Isora. Around 7.7 million people travel between the islands by sea each year.

The numbers it all rests on

The draft assumes growth, not relief. Population is projected to rise from 2,258,866 in 2025 to 2,700,000 in 2050, and daily journeys from 7,869,357 to 12,910,500 — up 64.1 percent. Against that stands a fleet of 1,932,862 vehicles (ISTAC, 2023), at 562.07 cars per 1,000 inhabitants against a Spanish average of 522.96. Under OES 33 the draft aims to raise the share of public transport and active mobility in metropolitan areas to 50 percent by 2035 — today public transport accounts for around eleven.

Who may take part — and what does not count this time

Under the anuncio, anyone may take part who is “cualquier persona física o jurídica interesada y no consultada” — any interested person not already formally consulted. The framing is what matters: the purpose of the consultation, it says, is to gather the environmental information for the Documento de Alcance, “sin valorar otro tipo de consideraciones” — without assessing other kinds of consideration, under article 18.2 of the Reglamento de Planeamiento de Canarias. Anyone writing about fares or frequencies is writing to the wrong stage.

The timing is striking: one day earlier, on 23 September 2026, the Cabildo de Tenerife approved its island plan PIMSIT with 92 measures and 5.097 billion euros to 2035, according to reports by RTVC, eldiario.es and Diario de Avisos — the very document from which the draft takes its rail figures.