Spain faces vital years for the railway between works and the urgency of latest trains | Economy | EUROtoday

Thousands of residents have now spent three weeks arming themselves with endurance to go to their office each morning, go to a gathering in Madrid or Barcelona, ​​or perform the manufacturing of their manufacturing facility. The practice accidents in Adamuz (Córdoba) and Gelida (Barcelona), which left 47 fatalities and greater than 150 injured, already represent a earlier than and after for railway transport in Spain. The Ministry of Transport is keen to evaluation the upkeep mannequin of high-speed roads, largely entrusted to non-public building firms, and is taking steps to strengthen security in Rodalies.

In the approaching years, half a thousand trains, which arrive late by the hands of Renfe, have to be renewed and main works have to be began, together with the reworking of the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line and the deployment of 8,000 million within the Catalan suburbs till 2030, for which it’s now deliberate to double upkeep spending. There are weeks of collapse, however the railway system is coming into a vital interval that would prolong past 2030. Making reforms whereas sustaining visitors will imply, to start with, prolonging into the approaching years the stress suffered by operators, the infrastructure supervisor Adif and, above all, hundreds of thousands of vacationers. There will likely be visitors rules, velocity limitations and incidents, whatever the rising influence of local weather change on infrastructure. This is what customers of Rodalies, of the road that connects Madrid and Barcelona, ​​or of the networks in Andalusia, have been struggling for weeks.

The railway collapse has additionally reached freight visitors this week. For the railway firm Railsider Mediterráneo, for instance, greater than 24,000 tons of metal from a number of European metal factories amassed in its warehouses in Portbou, the final Catalan station earlier than crossing France. Since the twentieth, the chaos on the Catalan trains prevented him from sending items from there to Barcelona and Sagunto. The closure of the Rubí tunnel (Barcelona) and the Gelida accident blocked virtually all rail visitors. “We placed urgent orders by road,” explains Laura Jamás, head of the corporate’s administration techniques. On Thursday they had been in a position to begin sending items to the port of Barcelona, ​​very slowly, however to not Valencia. Adif hopes that visitors will likely be utterly restored this Monday, though progressively. Two weeks later.

“The railway network is not a kettle. It cannot be fixed in two days and when it is abandoned, it takes time to recover.” The Minister of Transportation, Óscar Puente, stated this in Congress final Tuesday. And it gave the impression of a reproach. During his second look after the accidents, Puente acknowledged that the second is vital, however he additionally launched a barb towards the PP, which calls for his resignation: “We suffered a gap of investment in the railway of 30,000 million,” stated Puente, who blamed this deficit and a scarcity of planning on the Government of Mariano Rajoy.

The medical image of the railway is critical and complicated: a number of incidents, delays and outraged passengers, the collapse of Rodalies, the paralysis of the Catalan freight community, demonstrations by customers and practice drivers on strike. And all this has led to a disaster of confidence. Rodalies alone has misplaced between 25% and 30% of its customers, based on Renfe. “We are in a moment of obvious crisis that comes after a time of decline. It is going to take a lot to recover all that demand because many who have now switched to the intercity bus see that the network is unreliable,” says Carles García, president of the Platform for the Promotion of Public Transport (PTP), one of many entities calling for the protest in Barcelona.

For now, the Government has carried out a number of extraordinary measures to attempt to quell this disaster: the switch to Barcelona of the workplace of the Secretary of State for Transport, José Antonio Santano; the creation of a selected preventive upkeep division, which can have extra assets, or the discount of visitors velocity on the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line.

System collapse

The present chapter of the railway ecosystem comes from the age of the infrastructure, upkeep spending that consultants take into account inadequate and trains which are already approaching retirement age. But it additionally reveals that the infrastructure just isn’t ready for the blow attributable to local weather change, as has been confirmed in Catalonia and Andalusia.

“The process of deterioration of the infrastructure and rolling stock is inevitable over time, which affects both the quality of the service and safety, unless there is adequate maintenance that monitors the state of the assets, detects which elements require updating and is executed correctly according to a predefined protocol,” replicate the medical doctors in Civil Engineering, Enrique Castillo, and Industrial Engineering, Alfonso Fernández Canteli. “If the maintenance process is carried out properly, a line can maintain satisfactory levels of safety and performance without a time limit, and can guarantee the virtual absence of serious incidents, even as years pass and traffic increases,” they add.

Minister Puente maintained in Congress that “the maintenance and replacement of infrastructure is adequate according to the volume of circulation,” however he was open to rising it. “The high-speed lines are safe, but the technology used is very advanced and after 20 or 30 years you have to make renovations that are very expensive,” explains Joan Carles Salmerón, director of the Términus Transportation Studies Center.

A report from the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) from September 2024 highlights that there’s room to extend high-speed visitors, however warns of the necessity to remedy vital factors within the infrastructure. “Although rail traffic has grown after liberalization, the use of the high-speed network in Spain, with 58 daily circulations per kilometer of network, is less intense than in France (96 circulations) or Italy (248 circulations). Railway companies will put new trains into service in the short term (…) Therefore, it is necessary to identify the bottlenecks in the infrastructure and in the stations, and apply the necessary measures,” the report concludes.

Adapting the railway system, together with the standard community, to security and luxury requirements that restore confidence to customers can have a excessive price in cash and inconvenience. “The necessary preventive maintenance has not been done and for many years there has been apathy, especially in Cercanías. And now it will take a lot of time to put everything in order,” says Joan Amorós, president of Ferrmed, the foyer that seeks to advertise a railway axis that unites the south and north of Europe.

The managing associate of Infrastructure and Transportation at KPMG in Spain, Fernando Vizoso, considers that “network utilization levels are still low compared to other countries with a long railway tradition, both in passengers and cargo.” And it impacts the necessity to change the give attention to funding insurance policies. “Now may be the right time to make an extraordinary effort to inventory, digitize and audit the entire network, with a view to launching much more ambitious maintenance programs that will allow us to regain confidence in the system,” he factors out.

The renewal of the Madrid-Seville line between 2022 and 2026 will likely be adopted by that of the second oldest axis within the high-performance community, the Madrid-Barcelona. Adif has determined to hold out the works beginning in 2026 with out stopping circulation, with a horizon of actions that’s anticipated to succeed in the yr 2032. Transport reiterates that one of many aims continues to be to boost the utmost velocity from 300 to 350 kilometers per hour to extend the capability of the infrastructure to soak up trains.

The disaster has additionally broken the picture of the Spain modelwhose railway sector may boast international status as a result of high-speed community. “It has been a blow. The train is not experiencing its best moment, as Óscar Puente said. No, because factories in Germany, Belgium or Austria have had to stop because freight traffic was not working,” Salmerón laments.

“The result of the investigation carried out by the CIAF will determine the cause of the accidents. The recent evolution of the railway sector has caused a crisis of credibility in its leadership at an international level that must be faced with a deep reflection on the causes of the accidents and incidents that occur,” agrees Vizoso, of KPMG. “The capabilities that have led us to be a reference model have not disappeared, but it is clear that we have room for improvement in its management,” he provides.

Two years of incidents

The suppression of first and final minute trains between Madrid and Barcelona to increase the upkeep interval for Adif operators and the discount within the velocity of circulation – rising the journey time by 25 minutes till December – are an indication that the service requires larger security ensures in view of what occurred in Adamuz. The practice drivers, who’ve had entry to direct negotiations with Minister Puente on railway security, have been denouncing defects on the monitor since final August. And Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo have agreed to a discount in the advantages of their supply in view of the truth that complying with the dedicated schedules was already unattainable with the route suffering from non permanent velocity limitations.

The system has proven fragile seams with the chopping of the Madrid-Seville line after the Adamuz accident and the rains in Andalusia, the generalized delays on the route between Madrid and Barcelona and the paralysis for days of Rodalies. The superior age of the Renfe practice fleet doesn’t assist both, with 125 high-speed items, amongst which there are convoys from the Nineteen Nineties and 900 Cercanías trains, amongst which many count on a alternative, particularly in Madrid and Barcelona.

Puente already issued the warning in September that two years of incidents had been coming, referring to the close to obsolescence of the trains. The minister was coming from a summer time wherein half a thousand incidents had been recorded solely relating to the premiere of Renfe’s 106 collection, made up of 30 Talgo Avril. In truth, the deterioration of the picture of the practice comes from earlier than the January accidents. One of those episodes occurred on April 29, 2025, when a practice was stopped for 9 hours within the Pajares tunnel resulting from {an electrical} failure the day after the good blackout. Or on June 12, when 18 convoys and 34,000 vacationers had been affected by a derailment on the Madrid station of Chamartín. On the thirtieth of that very same month, greater than 20 trains remained stranded for hours on the Madrid-Seville line resulting from lack of rigidity in a catenary.

Engineers Castillo and Fernández Canteli imagine that the talk on the community conservation mannequin mustn’t happen reactively on infrastructure and trains with put on and tear, however from the very starting of the life cycle of all of the parts of the railway ecosystem. In any case, all of the consultants consulted are in favor of fixed and sustained upkeep spending, particularly on the busiest traces, corresponding to suburban traces. And they warn that reversing this example with out giving up the circulation of trains will imply years of inconvenience for the person. Normality remains to be distant.