The Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, has conveyed to the presidents of Asturias and Cantabria the strong commitment of the Government and the Ministry with the improvement of the Local Services of both autonomous communities and their direct involvement in the resolution of the setback that has meant a delay in the delivery of the new trains of metric width so that it is the smallest possible.
“From the moment I got to know the subject, I have left my skin to know everything that happened and to solve this situation. From day one, I have given my face, we have apologized, we have acknowledged the error, we have cleared up responsibilities and we have commissioned an internal audit and set up a working group to focus on providing a solution and accelerating as much as possible the construction of the trains. It has taken a long time to respond to a complex problem and, although everything is already in place to mitigate the delay and provide a solution, I cannot deny that I would have liked to have had this information much earlier”, said Raquel Sánchez to the media after the meeting with the presidents of the Principality of Asturias, Adrián Barbón, and of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla.
In this regard, the Minister has accepted the resignation of the Secretary of State, Isabel Pardo de Vera, and the President of Renfe, Isaías Táboas, and has thanked them for the work they have done in their respective positions.
“Now begins a new phase in the railway operator and in the Secretary of State”, the minister highlighted when announcing the next appointment of David Lucas, until now Secretary General of Housing of the Ministry, as new Secretary of State for Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, and that of Raül Blanco, who until December was Secretary General of Industry and SMEs of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, as new president of Renfe.
Improve services
In line with the objective of resolving the setback, mitigating its consequences as soon as possible and offering rail users the best service, the minister has announced an action plan aimed at strengthening rail services, renewing and modernising the entire metric width fleet with the extension of the contract and new tenders, and accelerating investments in the infrastructure contemplated in the Proximity Plan. To promote the implementation of the Proximity Plans of Asturias and Cantabria, the figure of a Commissioner will be created.
It has also opened the door to extend the free provision of rail services in the vicinity of Asturias and Cantabria beyond 31 December 2023 and until the arrival of the new trains. The idea is to provide the necessary funding, through the General State Budget, for both presidents to establish the measures they consider necessary to improve public transport, including free services.
In addition, among other initiatives, Raquel Sánchez has confirmed that the contract for the new trains is going to be extended to the maximum contemplated of the specifications, which allows adding 7 more units to the 31 planned, that a new tender is going to be launched to extend the renewal of the fleet that currently circulates on the network, and that the conditioning of the current rolling stock will be strengthened to improve its performance (accessibility, interior of the train, reliability) until the new units arrive.
These measures respond to the requests of the presidents of Asturias and Cantabria and have been included in the agreement signed by the three institutions to address the needs of local services.
At this point, it should be noted that, during the meeting, the owner of Mitma has remarked that the final design of the trains will be ready in summer, which will allow the end of the year or at the beginning of 2024, at the latest, to start manufacturing the units. The objective is that in the first half of 2026 we will have the first trains in circulation. The original contract sets the middle of next year as the delivery date of the trains.
“Our commitment to the metric wide network and, above all, to its users, is real and ongoing. A commitment that is reflected in the agreement reached and that reflects the commitment of this Government with the development of our railway networks in Cantabria and Asturias and with its public transport,” said Raquel Sánchez.
Agreements
In particular, the action plan contained in the agreements is articulated in seven points:
1. To show common recognition of the decisive importance of the railway proximity system in the future of the mobility of both communities. There is a need to rebuild and promote the infrastructure and services provided, so that progress continues to be made in the actions already in progress within the framework of the current Proximity Plan, ensuring them in the medium and long term. All of them must be translated into the corresponding proximity plans, exhaustive documents prepared by the ministry, and in which they will collect the investments worth about 1.1 billion euros, which are planned in each community.
2. Mitma is committed to providing the CCAA as soon as possible with a complete schedule and program of all the actions included in the proximity plans that will specify and schedule for the coming years the different actions contained in them. Likewise, a Commissioner will be created for the execution of the proximity plans of Asturias and Cantabria and the supervision of the agreements provided herein.
3. With regard to the contract for the construction of 31 new units of trains of metric width that Renfe has signed with CAF, it is recognized that no train has been built or planned, as well as that no public expense has been incurred in relation to it. Given the accumulated delay, it is considered necessary to prepare, together with the manufacturing company, a detailed schedule of the work to be carried out and the deliveries of trains, which will be staggered as they are completed in the factory.
It is agreed to apply the clause foreseen to expand the number of trains by 7 more, so that the total number of units manufactured becomes 38. In addition, new contracts will be established to guarantee the total renewal of the fleet of trains that provide their service in the metric width network in both communities with units that respond to the maximum benefits of comfort and sustainability.
The temporary objective is that the manufacturing work can begin at the end of this year, so that the first trains can be put into service in the first half of 2026.
4. Mitma is committed to sharing with both CAAs the results of the audit that the Ministry has recently initiated to ensure transparency in the purging of responsibilities, as well as in the implementation of the corresponding proposals for improvement in the organization.
5. Mitma will develop and implement a Service Improvement Plan that allows for the reordering of schedules and the improvement of service frequencies and travel times. This plan will address the reorganization of the time frame according to the new mobility needs, reversing the current situation of regression in the service.
6. Materialize the tariff integration of the conventional and meter-wide Neighbourhoods centres in the centres of Asturias and Cantabria. Thus, both networks will form a single network of services in each of the centers, providing an integrated transport offer, so that travelers can use the same transport title to travel indistinctly on the lines of conventional width and metric width, supposing greater comfort and economic savings to the users of both networks. All this in coordination with the public transport authorities of both autonomous communities.
7. Extend the current financial contribution for the gratuitousness of the railway vicinity in Asturias and Cantabria beyond December 31, 2023 and until the delivery of the train units pending in the current contract. To this end, the Ministry will make available through the General State Budgets two financial contributions to the financing of the public transport system of Asturias and Cantabria, to apply the corresponding bonuses and improvements in the provision of the service.
Background
During her speech, the minister stressed the importance of being “clear and realistic” with the facts that have led to the delay in the execution of the contract and has censored that she has been misinformed and trivialized with such an important issue, reducing herself “to the meme of some supposedly manufactured trains that have never existed”. “But it is neither trivial nor comical to have a train park that in many cases exceeds 40 years and it is no botch the investment we have put in place to reverse this situation,” reiterated the head of the Department.
Thus, although there has been a delay, Raquel Sánchez recalled that “there has been no bad faith, not a single euro of public money has been wasted and no irreversible situation has occurred because no train has been manufactured”. It was in the initial design and project phase that it was found that applying the standard standard for the design of the new trains was unfeasible.
“Buying a new train and, even more so for an infrastructure such as the not newly built metre-wide network, is like going to the tailor to make a ‘tailor-made suit’. It is about designing a train that has the best characteristics to offer the best performance in the network through which it is going to have to travel”, he explained.
The problem is that it has taken a long time to obtain the solution of applying the comparative method and adjusting the measures of the convoys to the existing ones to design the new trains.
It is a methodology included in the European regulations, which is used and more in existing lines, and which allows us to say maximize the capacity of the new trains ensuring that they are compatible with the line through which they are going to circulate. “Finding and deciding this solution has taken such an excessive amount of time that it is not acceptable and that it requires delimiting responsibilities and determining the failures that may have been incurred in the process,” said the minister, who recalled that the audit in charge is to determine what has been failed in the entire process so that it has been prolonged so much and establish the measures so that it does not happen again.
Boost to investment
“We are responsible for the delay in the delivery of trains, but, this Government is also responsible for having deployed an investment bet and measures to improve the vicinity and promote its use as no government had before.” A bet that has resulted in doubling the investments planned in the network of Neighbourhoods of Asturias to 1,100 million euros and tripling those of Cantabria, with a very similar allocation.
“Now we have realities and certainties, before we only had power points and smoke sellers,” the minister recalled before listing examples of the actions that are being carried out:
- Pajares is getting closer to being a reality and from 21 February the infrastructure is now moving from the construction phase to the circulation direction of Adif.
- In the high speed to Cantabria, this year all the sections between Palencia and Aguilar de Campoo are tendered or in execution.
- The actions that were stored in a drawer have been unblocked: the new access to the port of Santander, the knot of Torrelavega or the gorge of the Hermida.
“Of the road renovations in Asturias, the Gijón-Laviana metric gauge is just the beginning, or the entry into service of the Musel regasification plant,” he concluded.