It is always good to start with the good things: between August 26 and 29 and between October 14 and 17, 2022 there were no incidence in the Rodalies de Catalunya service. There were two waves of three days in which the Nearby trains circulated as planned, without infrastructure breakdowns, or lack of driversNo major delays. It is the parenthesis of ‘rail pax’ longest that was lived during the past year, an exercise in which the network registered 559 incidents that generated 288,000 minutes of delay, which is equivalent to 200 days. they saw each other almost 18,000 trains affected and on four out of five days between January 1 and December 31, there were problems. Were 284 days with troublefor 81 in which everything went smoothly.
At the gates of the general elections, without a doubt the transport and mobility they will be one of the hot topics of the campaign. With the State defending its management and sticking out its chest to have the main operator in Catalonia (Renfe) and the Government demanding the total transfer of powers so that, one day, they can cede total control to Ferrocarrils.
Adif prepares every month the ‘Report on events affecting the Catalan suburban service of more than 100 minutes late’, documents that show, in great detail, to what extent the slightly less than half a million daily users of Rodalies are right when, in the always subjective and hot social networks, they complain bitterly of the constant problems to get to work, the doctor or the university by train. The thing goes a long way.
Operator or manager?
Each study provides the causes of the incidents, and only in 5.9% of the cases the problem is related to “atmospheric agents”. 60% of the causes are attributable to incidents in the infrastructure or to operator problems. And although it may seem that Adif, the manager of the tracks and catenaries, is always responsible, the truth is that Renfe beats it in percentage: on average between January and December, Renfe is guilty of 32.7% of the incidents, for 27.9% of Adif. The other 35% is attributable, among other things, to vandalism, with a total of 61 incidents (11% of the total). This newspaper already told you that in 2022 a total of 427 incidents due to stone throwing were recorded, for example, but not all of them caused delays or relevant problems in the service.
If the operator and infrastructure manager are compared based on the minutes of delay they caused, the difference skyrockets in favor (or against, depending on how you look at it) of Renfe, which accumulates a lot longer affectation time with its incidents. Renfe eats 48.6% of the minutes of delay, while Adif assumes only 19.2%. For months, the most complicated was March, with only two days of tranquilitywhile the least eventful was February, with 10 days Nothing serious has been reported. By places, Barcelona and its immediate surroundings have a good part of the problems, especially the França station, L’Hospitalet, Sants and Sagrera.
And the works?
Curiously, the presence of works in the percentage has gone from less to more, surely as a reflection of the investment that the State is making in the railway network of Catalonia. In January 2022, the impact of network reforms was 0%. As the year progresses, there are months in which things skyrocket. 21.5% of the time lost due to the infrastructure work in September and 13% in December. It may be due to two things: one, that there were no projects and as the year progressed, plans to improve the grid began; or two, that there were or affected less.
September 2 was the day with higher number of incidents, a total of seven. One more than the previous day, which was in fact the worst in terms of accumulated delay: a whopping 9,373 minutes. In fact, between August 30 and September 2, the worst period of all 2002, with 19 incidents that totaled 20,833 minutes of delay that affected 862 trains. To put things in perspective, every day there are a thousand train services in Catalonia. In those days a championship storm was recorded, which is why the reports themselves already place “atmospheric agents” as the main cause of all this mess.
“Execution defects”
All these incidents forced Renfe to cancel nearly 2,000 Rodalies trains (1,976, to be exact, plus another 180 from medium distance). the day with more commuter convoys that were left without leaving (116) was September 9, the day on which in the france station there was a seven-hour stoppage caused by the “execution defects” of a work. It is followed by January 1, with 90 trains stranded at the same terminal due to operational failures that affected another 37 medium-distance trains.
Related news
The person in charge of the Rodalies 2020-2030 plan, Pere Macias, explained to this newspaper weeks ago that incidents should begin to drop significantly in the short term. Of the close to 6,400 million euros promised, close to a thousand have already been executed. To this we must add another 1,300 million already awarded and pending execution and another 1,600 that are in the process of public tender. In total, 3,900 million in one way or another mobilized.
Macias highlights a package that adds 131 million euros that correspond to 107 small works that have to do with “the asset replacement“; that is, improvements in catenaries, tracks, electronic systems, trenches (open-air side walls). All these interventions have already been carried out and there are another 900 in portfolio. These more surgical actions are the ones that must minimize the incidents that Adif’s ancient infrastructure still suffers today.