# A GIS-Based Analysis of the Light Rail Transit Systems in Spain
## 5 Results and Discussion
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Granada** & **Murcia** & **Tenerife** & **Vitoria** & **Zaragoza** \\ \hline
1 & Annual service users & & & & & \\
1 & (million pax) & 10.20 & 5.10 & 14.10 & 8.30 & 28.20 \\
2 & Line length (km) & 15.90 & 18.00 & 16.10 & 12.72 & 12.80 \\
3 & Number of lines (units) & 1.00 & 2.00 & 2.00 & 2.00 & 1.00 \\
4 & Number of stations (units) & 26.00 & 28.00 & 25.00 & 20.00 & 33.00 \\
5 & Number shared stations (units) & 0.00 & 1.00 & 2.00 & 6.00 & 0.00 \\
6 & Capture area (km\({}^{2}\)) & 14.08 & 14.33 & 12.79 & 7.06 & 11.76 \\
7 & Potential users (pop) & 26,131.00 & 21,705.00 & 29,713.00 & 17,900.00 & 22,286.00 \\
8 & Daily users (pax) & 18,214.29 & 9107.14 & 25,178.57 & 14,821.43 & 50,357.14 \\
9 & Users per station & 700.55 & 325.26 & 1.007.14 & 741.07 & 1525.97 \\
10 & Acceptance rate & 70\% & 42\% & 85\% & 83\% & 226\% \\
11 & Density of capture area & 1855.89 & 1514.65 & 2323.14 & 2535.41 & 1895.07 \\
12 & Mean distance between stations (m) & 636.00 & 666.67 & 644.00 & 530.00 & 400.00 \\
13 & Passengers per unit line & 0.64 & 0.28 & 0.88 & 0.65 & 2.20 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 3: Group 1 results. is the smallest city of the group (over 210,000 inhabitants). With that in mind, a list of the public rail transportation systems in Spanish cities over 200,000 inhabitants has been included (Table 5), and a frontier in cities over 325,000 inhabitants is more or less marked, including the future and uncommon BTR system in Las Palmas (there is no one in Spain for the moment). A second step emerges, delimited by 325 and 200 thousand: cities in that group can have or have not an LRT system, but definitely not a conventional metro system. In Group 1, the data for Zaragoza are surprising: the users of that line double those of the following LRT, Tenerife, while at the same time, such parameters as density of capture area or length of line are not particularly noteworthy. This leads to high numbers in those parameters directly related to users (acceptance rate, users per station, passengers per unit line). One possible reason for this success may be due to another noteworthy fact of this LRT: the mean distance between stations is noticeably shorter than the rest. Therefore, one possible explanation stems from the shorter distance between stations and points of origin/destination of trips. In this sense, it may be observed that Murcia is extreme in both categories, so there might be a relationship between the mean distance between stations and acceptance rate. Figure 6 shows such an equivalence showing a certain logic: even Tenerife could be due to the city being a coastal city, which in practice, means that there are no points 500 m from stations. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**City**} & **Population in Thousands** & \multirow{2}{*}{**Metro/LRT**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Notes**} \\  & **(1 January 2021)** & & \\ \hline Madrid & 3305 & Metro and LRT & \\ Barcelona & 1636 & Metro and LRT & \\ Valencia & 789 & Metro and LRT & \\ Seville & 684 & Metro and LRT & \\ Zaragoza & 675 & LRT & \\ Malaga & 577 & Metro & \\ Murcia & 460 & LRT & \\ Palma & 419 & Metro & \\ Las Palmas & 378 & - & Future BTR [84] \\ Bilbao & 346 & Metro and LRT & \\ Alicante & 337 & Tram-train & \\ Cordoba & 322 & - & - \\ Valladolid & 297 & - & - \\ Vigo & 293 & - & - \\ Gijón & 268 & - & Future train system [85] \\ Vitoria & 253 & LRT & \\ A Coruña & 245 & - & - \\ Elche & 234 & - & - \\ Granada & 231 & LRT & \\ Oviedo & 217 & - & - \\ Cartagena & 216 & - & - \\ Jerez de la & 212 & - & Future tram-train [6] \\ Frontera & 208 & LRT & \\ Pamplona & 203 & - & - \\ Almeria & 200 & - & - \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 5: Existence of metro and/or LRT in the main Spanish cities (municipalities which are part of a metropolis already cited are not included). That figure also shows the values associated with Group 2.