It only remains to hear that “with Franco the trains were better”, in these terms has begun Oscar Puente, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, his appearance in the Senate to justify himself -at the request of the PP- for the railway chaos that has been experienced this summer in Spain.
The session came ‘hot’ by the breakdown last Thursday of an AVE train that made the journey Vigo-Madrid, forcing 500 passengers to change trains, and another on Tuesday that interrupted all high-speed traffic at Chamartin station. These are the last two episodes of a summer marked by delays and collapses, the most serious of which occurred last August 5, when passengers of an Avlo train that had been stuck for three hours at the entrance to Madrid had to break the windows of the carriages to avoid suffocation..
Yes, the minister has apologized to passengers and acknowledged that almost 80% of the trains Avril (the new high speed model that entered service last May). The apology was accompanied by a series of attacks against the former PP government and the train manufacturer Talgo, which he holds -especially the former- responsible for the incidents. This, however, has been preceded by a peroration with which he has tried to justify that the public operator “is living in Spain the best moment of its history”, he has said.
This is how the minister began, with a history lesson which went back to the summer of 2007, when the journey time between Madrid and Valladolid was 2h 25m, “and now it is 55m”, he recalled. He continued with Madrid-Malaga, which in this time has gone from 5h and 2m to 2h and 45m, and then Madrid-Valencia, Madrid-Alicante, etc.
He also stressed that in this time the plane has gone from representing 85% of the share between Madrid-Barcelona to only 15% today, or that this August long weekend have traveled 12% more people than a year ago, with trains occupied on average 97%. It has also compared this August 23 with the same day in 2019, rising 67% traffic and 36% occupancy.
With all this, what the minister was coming to say is that “there has never been a better railway service than the one provided in Spain at the moment.“. Regarding the criticisms, he has defended himself by assuring to have “listened in talk shows to talk about the Spain of 1992 as the reference in railway matters. At that time there were only six trains a day in each direction, 4,164 seats. Today, every day, 532 trains with 115,000 people move in Spain. Of course, the six trains that ran between Madrid and Seville in 1992 were on time, but that was not of great merit. Now 76% of those 532 trains arrive on time”, he explained.
This mention to the Barcelona of ’92 has served him to answer to the criticism of the senators of the opposition, who have reproached him the decision of the Ministry of to change Renfe’s commitment to punctualityRenfe no longer refunds money for delays of 15 or 30 minutes, as in the last 30 years, but only for delays of one hour or more.
The Minister has justified the change because the commitment was from 1992, and according to him it is no longer viable with the current volume of trains and “in a scenario of a lot of infrastructure work and with a very stressed system”. In this regard, Puente recalled that last year Renfe paid 42 million euros in compensation; maintaining the model “was economic suicide”.he concluded.
A large part of the Minister’s appearance focused on the works at Chamartín station, a communications hub that centralizes rail traffic with the northwest quadrant and the high-speed lines with the North and Levante. According to the minister, the previous informative study that authorized the works, which was carried out by the previous government, failed to foresee that by 2024 the volume of passengers would have increased fivefold and that, he said, “… the new station will be able to handle a greater number of passengers.this year will surpass what was planned to be reached in 2040, more than 12 million passengers.“.
Regarding the tunnel between Chamartín and Atocha, which is a source of problems because it has only one track that stops all traffic every time it is blocked, more of the same. “I have neither tendered nor awarded that tunnel,” he said, before promising that when the expansion of this station and Atocha station is completed, “all the sections will be double track”.
He also criticized the PP with regard to the new models of high speed, the 106 series (Avril). The Minister recalled that it was the previous government that awarded the manufacture of the trains to the Spanish Talgo, with a 43% reduction in the bidding price. Cheap ends up being expensiveHe also announced a second complaint against the company, after the one he already filed for the delay in the delivery of the units.
