An hour later, is it a lot or a short time? It is the time that the bus from Bilbao to San Sebastian takes. Spend an hour to get to work, spend an hour to attend a concert, spend an hour to see a friend or family member, spend an hour to reach a meeting on time or late. Sitting on the bus I will take the opportunity to reflect on what was heard the other day in the Summer Course on the TAV. Within an hour I picked up my notes in a messy way and ordered them in my head. We have also been fooled by the drivers of the APR; the time savings promised at the beginning have been blurred. The latest estimates estimate a trip of about 55 minutes.

Transport economists talked about the lack of profitability of the APR. Although they're economists, when they talk about profitability, they talk about social profitability. That is, they take into account what in the economy is called “externality”: pollution, ability to liberate roads, time savings, number of accidents... On the financial side, most of the APR lines operate without covering the costs. The key, therefore, is to assess whether what is not financially profitable is socially profitable.

The Spanish state leads the TAV per inhabitant in built kilometers, but as for the number of travelers the opposite occurs: it is only used by a small elite. Most people use conventional trains to travel around the region. From this point of view, the construction of the APR is being totally against equity and is having a large redistribution of resources from the poorest to the richest sectors. The train that is going to be for the richest sectors of society is being funded through unfair revenue. In the CAV, the classes of workers pay 35.5% of the direct taxes, three times what capital incomes pay.

In addition, every euro spent on the construction of the APR is also the euro that is not intended for other areas: education, social housing or environmental care. Our neoliberal authorities and their media continually question social policies, there is nothing more to do with the campaign to delegitimize Income Guarantee Income (IGR). However, they do not tell us about corporate tax fraud and they do not tell us that in the 2017 budgets they have decided to spend three times what will be allocated to the GDR for the construction of the APR. Yes, three.

Job creation is a banal argument for defending a project such as the TAV. The question is what employment we are creating and for what purpose. If the goal is to create jobs, instead of building miles of TAV, let's build more health centers, nursing homes or children's schools. In the case of the construction of the CVT in the Basque Country, workers are working in very precarious conditions. Journalist Urko Apaolaza is doing a tremendously important job collecting the testimonies of this exploitation.

The problem is not economic, not even from economists: the more evidence we receive, the more evident it is that no, that the Basque TAV is not socially profitable. The problem is that of the decision-makers, therefore the political problem. Knowing that it's not cost-effective, we continue to make miles and dig. Politicians are committed to defending the viability of building a train. Although it will be more expensive than planned to make access to cities, the unreleased tunnels have already become obsolete. How long will they continue to say that the APR is cost-effective?