An electrical accident whose causes have not yet been clarified, with lightning for which no meteorological service is known to be responsible, has left a minimum service commuter trains to the south of Barcelona. And so it will be for at least three weeks (or even up to four months to return to full normality). During this period, shorter or longer, the frequencies will be reduced to manage traffic almost manually after the destruction suffered by the electrical and control infrastructure of the Gavà station of the R2, and alternative means of transportation must be enabled to minimize the affectations. Whether what happened was imponderable or a consequence of the state of the facilities, in either case what happened becomes another challenge to the patience already exhausted of Rodalies users. It is difficult to ask them to maintain it in the face of service interruptions, breakdowns and unpredictability. Just the opposite of what is needed to make it increasingly the reliable, comfortable, fast and economical alternative that contributes to diverting part of the metropolitan road traffic to more sustainable modes of mobility.
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This latest dysfunction in the Rodalies system, like all those that insistently follow one another, has uncomfortably palpable, objective and undeniable consequences on the daily life of the residents of the metropolitan region. And that discomfort is the basis that again takes the incident to another level, essentially political, beyond public discontent or technical or even budgetary discussions. From some sectors it is intended to take advantage, almost systematically every time there is a railway incident, to insist on the idea of an ideal Catalonia in which this type of problem would not exist. Rather than mixing debates and sell easy speeches but difficult to comply with, they would all do better to focus on finding real solutions. And these solutions happen because each administration assumes its own responsibilities, before looking for the errors in third parties. First of all, Adifas in charge of the train lines, their design and construction, and managing circulation on them, has to answer for the numerous deficiencies detected in the infrastructure, and the Ministry of Transport, on which it depends, increases the discontent of users when it replies that the planned million-dollar investment plan needs execution time. The Generalitat has powers over timetables and fares, but is right when it demands more state investment on an outdated network, and the compliance with the budgetso that train delays are not the daily bread.
The umpteenth Rodalies mishap happens in full election period. So hopefully the R2 mess will become campaign material. This is how it will be, and we will have to live together and try to distinguish between ex officio reproaches, pertinent debates on the mobility model and the resources it requires, explanations on the still confusing causes that have been handled for the last incident and the necessary technical management, with the service to the affections in the foreground, of a situation that should be resolved diligently.