Trains that are too wide don’t pass through the tunnels, the Spanish undersecretary for transport resigns

Barcelona – Secretary of State for Transport and former president of Adif, the state-owned company that administers railway infrastructure, Isabel Pardo de Vera and the president of Renfe, the Spanish railway company, Isaiah Tablesresigned from their post last Monday following the scandal of trains designed too high to enter tunnels, made known by the press at the end of last January.

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Trains that are too wide don’t pass through tunnels

Loudly requested resignations from the Autonomous Communities that have seen themselves affected by the planning error, Cantabria and Asturias, provoked and welcomed by the Minister of Transport Raquel Sánchez in an attempt to calm the waters.

RESIGNATION

Therefore, the sacrifice of two intermediate positions by Renfe and Adif in recent days was not enough to plug what has been defined as “a mess, a botched thing” in the words of Miguel Ángel Revilla, president of Cantabria. The facts, which tell the story of “one of the biggest railway fiascos of recent years”, date back to 2020, when Renfe undertook to renew the fleet of vehicles that travels on the railway network managed by Feve with 31 new trains, 21 destined for Cantabria and 10 for Asturias, the introduction of which should have reduced the average age of those circulating from 28 to 15 years. It is in fact an ancient 19th century network, which has been experiencing problems for over two decades, with trains that have been in operation for up to 40 years, often at risk of accidents. The Basque company Caf wins the contract for the design and construction of the trains for 258 million euros, the contract sets the execution, manufacturing and maintenance time at 220 months. The Caf soon realizes Renfe’s mistake in the dimensions indicated in the tender: the trains are in fact designed 20 centimeters higher than what the tunnels of the network can contain, precisely because the tunnels in that network are lower than usual . It’s a design error, the machines haven’t been built yet, so not a penny has been spent. But now the costs will rise to fix the problem and there will be a delay of at least a couple of years in delivery, when the first new trains are due to arrive next year.

THE PROBLEM

In the first months of 2021 the problem was reported by the successful tenderer, therefore Adif and Renfe must have known about it for some time, the story was hushed up for two years. The Minister of Transport, appointed to lead the department a few months later and officially unaware of the matter until the moment of the journalistic revelation, acknowledged the problem at the beginning of February and promised an internal investigation, still not concluded, to identify the responsibilities of the ‘happened. Possible solutions are studied. The hypothesis of widening the tunnels was immediately rejected because the operation would require much more time and be very expensive. To avoid restricting the internal space of the trains for passengers, it is therefore thought to apply the so-called “comparative method”, used in other countries but never in Spain, according to which the new machines will replicate the dimensions of one of the trains in operation, thus to avoid new errors and reduce manufacturing times as much as possible. The correct design will be finalized for the summer. The first new trains will be ready in 2026 and, until then, the ministry guarantees free local rail transport services in Cantabria and Asturias, as requested by the respective regional presidents, although in the rest of Spain this measure applies until the end of the 2023. In addition, the new trains will be seven more than the original 31 and a commissioner will be appointed by the ministry to oversee the completion of the project.

A mess similar to the Spanish one had happened in France in 2014. At the time, trains were built that were too wide to pass on the platforms of the older stations. But since in that case the trains had already been built, the tracks had to be modified, with additional costs.

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