The railway is dying in Asturias. As revealed by LA NUEVA ESPAÑA, from the Prensa Ibérica group, the metric gauge (formerly Feve) has lost nearly 70% of its users so far this century, from almost five million to just over one. There are 600 passengers less than average per day since 2005, a drain.
The lack of investment, the age of the infrastructure and rolling stock, the fiasco of the integration of Feve into Renfe and Adif (non-existent in many aspects) and, ultimately, the abandonment of the metric gauge by the political leaders and the public operator are the main reasons for the decline of the train, according to experts.
What is the ‘Fevemocho’?
As if all that were not enough, a few days ago the “fevemocho“, a scandal caused by the delay of more than two years that accumulates the manufacture of 31 metric gauge trains as the dimensions required by Renfe for the units are incompatible with those of some tunnels in Asturias and Cantabria.
The starting point of the process that has led to the “Fevemocho” is four years ago, on February 11, 2019, when Renfe tendered the manufacture of 31 metric gauge trains. The two offers submitted were opened a month later, but the award agreement –for 196.3 million euros, to Construcciones y Auxiliar del Ferrocarril SA (CAF)– did not arrive until June 30, 2020, one year and three months later.
Delay in signing the agreement
There was then another period of six months, since the presidents of Renfe, Isaías Táboas, and CAF, Andrés Arizkorreta, did not sign the agreement until December 29, 2020. Surprisingly, the signing was prior to the publication of the award, on February 4, 2021, something “unusual”, according to experts in the railway sector and in the contract award processes by public administrations.
incompatible measures
A month later, in March 2021, the incompatibility between the measurements of the trains and the tunnels was confirmed. The reason, that Renfe included in the specifications the measurements of the new or conditioned tunnels that Adif collects in its official documents, but not the real ones of the so-called “historical”, much narrower.
It is not that the convoys had not fit in those underground passages, but that they did not comply with the minimum distances to the sides and the roof of the tunnels established by current regulations. Or, seen in another way, that to comply with the standard, the trains would have to have been too small, much smaller than the current ones. So the train design process stopped.
Who discovered the error?
It is not clear. Some sources affirm that it was CAF, with previous experiences in the manufacture of trains for Feve, and others that they were operators of Renfe. The fact is that the “problem” was registered, but no further steps were taken until six months later.
In September 2021, during a joint meeting of representatives of Renfe, Adif, the Ministry of Transport and the State Agency for Railway Safety (AESF), the solution was determined: apply the so-called “comparative method”, consisting of “copying “for future trains, the dimensions of the largest convoys that already run on the Feve lines. In this case, Renfe’s 3600 series units, which have been in service for almost twenty years on four Asturian metric-gauge commuter lines.
Why was nothing done?
Once the “problem” has been discovered and the “solution” determined, it remains to be seen why nothing was done from September 2021 until the scandal broke. The explanation has to do in part with the Angrois accident, which occurred on July 24, 2013, three kilometers from the Santiago de Compostela station, in which 80 people died and 144 were injured. That accident changed everything in the Spanish railway sector.
After that catastrophe, the Government accelerated the creation –often promised– of the AESF, which began its activity on April 1, 2015. One of the first tasks of this body was to approve the “Gauge Railway Instruction”, on April 14, 2015. July 2015.
This regulation determines, among other aspects, the gauges (maximum dimensions of the rolling stock to guarantee the safe passage of trains through elements such as tunnels) for newly built units and new or refurbished tunnels. But it does not explicitly include the “comparative method”. It is contemplated by European regulations, so it could have been applied without problem. With an addition: someone had to sign an exception to the rule in order to apply it and unlock the manufacture of trains.
the final hurdle
Renfe found an insurmountable obstacle: no official wanted to sign that exception, for fear of an accident in one of the “historic” tunnels of the Feve network and having to face criminal liability, as is happening with several operators involved in the accident Angrois.
In such a way that another sixteen more months passed without any progress, until, a few weeks ago, the president of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla publicly denounced that the promised trains had not even begun to be built because an error in the dimensions would have prevented them from running through the tunnels, and that the Ministry had kept hidden what it described as “a botch job” for two years. The President of the Principality, Adrián Barbón, joined the criticism two days later.
The monumental scandal, which was echoed even by foreign television, provoked the reaction of the leaders of Transport, who in just ten days have solved what they had not been able to solve in the previous two years, through the “express” drafting and approval of a ministerial order that eliminates any possible reluctance regarding the “comparative method” and certifies its validity. As this newspaper announced, the order was published yesterday in the “Official State Gazette” (BOE), although it will not enter into force until next July 1.
The ministerial order, which occupies 337 pages, modifies the text of the “Instrucción ferroviaria de calibos” to enable the lines in which it is not possible to comply with the established one to design the new trains reproducing the dimensions of convoys in service that prove Extensive commercial experience in the sections of track in which they will provide services. Translated: future trains may have the dimensions that Renfe wanted.
What will happen from now on with the trains ordered almost three years ago? The Ministry estimates that the design of the future units will be ready throughout this summer, that their manufacture will begin immediately thereafter and that delivery will arrive no later than 2026, two years later than initially planned.
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Barbón and Revilla demand, on the one handspeed up the manufacturing process as much as possible and study a possible “partial delivery, one by one”, of the units as they are ready.
On the other hand, until the manufacturing is finished, they demand compensatory measures, such as free commuter trains until 2026, more investments, time changes, a specific calendar for the works involved and more trains. The answer to all those demands, tomorrow.