The United States Secretary for Transportation, Anthony Foxx, visited Spain in order to study the country’s experience with high-speed railways. Spain has the world’s second largest high-speed rail network.

During this visit, the head of transportation policy for the Obama Administration signed a collaboration agreement with Ana Pastor, Spain’s Minister of Public Works and Transport, under which the two countries promise to cooperate on issues relating to infrastructure. Spain has the world’s second largest network of high-speed railways, behind only China, spanning over 3,000 kilometers.

The agreement between Spain and the US builds on Spain’s experience with high-speed rail, covering control centers for rail traffic, public-private collaboration schemes and the construction of other infrastructure.

Secretary Foxx also planned to travel on the high-speed rail line connecting Madrid and Valencia, on Spain’s eastern coast. This is the second time in the last five years that a US Secretary of Transportation has visited Spain in order to see the country’s infrastructure first hand.

In May 2009, former Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood under the Obama Administration visited Spain to study its high-speed rail systems. During that visit Secretary LaHood traveled on the line connecting Madrid and Zaragoza, in northern Spain. He also attended a meeting with a hundred Spanish companies from the rail sector interested in entering the US market.

America’s Secretary of Transportation is another in the long list of representatives from numerous countries that have traveled to Spain in recent years in order to study the country’s infrastructure.