The railroad is dying in Asturias. As LA NUEVA ESPAÑA of the Prensa Ibérica group explains, the metric indicator (formerly Feve) has lost around 70% of its users this century, almost to just over one in five million. 600 passengers a day below average since 2005, that’s an evacuation. Lack of investment, infrastructure and age of wagons, the fiasco in Feve’s integration into Renfe and Adif (which in many respects does not exist) and the eventual abandonment of the metric indicator by political leaders and the public are the main reasons for the train’s downfall, according to experts. As if all that wasn’t enough, a few days ago”fevemocho“A scandal caused by more than two years of delay accumulating production of 31 metric line trains, as the dimensions Renfe required for units were incompatible with those of some tunnels in Asturias and Cantabria.
The starting point for the process leading up to “Fevemocho” is four years ago, on 11 February 2019, when Renfe tendered the manufacture of 31 metric track trains. The two bids submitted were opened a month later, but the €196.3m prize contract awarded to Construcciones y Auxiliar del Ferrocarril SA (CAF) did not arrive until 30 June 2020, one year and three months later.
There was another six months since Renfe, Isaías Táboas and CAF presidents Andrés Arizkorreta signed the agreement on 29 December 2020. Surprisingly, the signing was before the award was released in February. October 4, 2021 is “unusual” according to experts in the railway sector and in the tender processes of public administrations.
A month later, in March 2021, the discrepancy between the dimensions of the trains and the dimensions of the tunnels was confirmed. The reason why Renfe includes in specifications the dimensions of new or conditioned tunnels that Adif collects in its official documents, but not the so-called “historical” ones, is much narrower. It is not because the convoys do not fit in those underground passages, but because they do not comply with the minimum distances to the sides and roofs of the tunnels created by the current regulations. Or, from another perspective, the trains would have to be very small, much smaller than existing trains, to meet the standard. So the train design process stopped.
Who discovered the error? Not open. Some sources confirm that those with previous experience in train manufacturing for Feve are CAFs and others are Renfe’s operators. The fact is that the “problem” was registered, but no further action was taken until six months later.
In September 2021, at a joint meeting of representatives of Renfe, Adif, the Ministry of Transport and the State Railway Safety Agency (AESF), the solution was determined: apply the so-called “comparative method” consisting of “copying”. sizes of the largest convoys currently operating on the Feve lines for future trains. In this case, Renfe’s 3600 series units, which have been in service for almost two decades on four Asturian metric-track suburban lines.
Once the “problem” was discovered and the “solution” identified, it remains to be seen why nothing was done from September 2021 until the scandal erupted. The explanation is in part related to the Angrois accident on July 24, 2013, three kilometers from the Santiago de Compostela station, in which 80 people were killed and 144 injured. That accident changed everything in the Spanish rail industry.
After this disaster, the Government accelerated the establishment of AESF, which started its activities on April 1, 2015, which it had mostly promised. One of the first tasks of this body was to approve the “Gauge Railway Order” on April 14, 2015. July 2015.
This regulation sets dimensions (maximum dimensions of wagons to guarantee the safe passage of trains through elements such as tunnels) for, among other things, newly built units and new or refurbished tunnels. But it does not explicitly include the “comparative method”. It was designed by European regulations, so it could be implemented without any problems. With one addition: someone had to sign an exception to the rule to enforce the rule and unlock train production.
Renfe found an insurmountable obstacle: no official wanted to sign this exception, fearing an accident in one of the “historic” tunnels of the Feve network and facing criminal liability, as happened with several operators involved in the Angrois accident.
So much so that another sixteen months passed without progress, until a few weeks ago the president of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla, publicly announced that the promised trains had not begun to be built, because an error in dimensions could lead to it. He said he blocked them from passing through the tunnels and hid what the Ministry described as “a clumsy job” for two years. Principality President Adrián Barbón joined the criticism two days later.
The huge scandal, which even resonated on foreign television, drew the ire of Transport leaders, who had resolved what they couldn’t in the past two years by writing and approving a “quick” draft in just ten days. A ministerial mandate that dispels possible reluctance to the “comparative method” and certifies its validity. As this newspaper explains, the instruction was published yesterday in the “Official State Gazette” (BOE), but will not take effect until next July 1.
The ministerial order, which spans 337 pages, changes the text of “Instrucción ferroviaria de calibos” to allow lines where it is not possible to fit the established one to design new trains that reproduce the sizes of convoys in service. To have extensive commercial experience in the parts of the track that they will serve. Translation: future trains could have the dimensions Renfe wanted. The next step is tomorrow, the meeting of Minister Raquel Sánchez in Madrid with Barbón and Revilla to explain more about “Fevemocho” and discuss the future of metrics in the two autonomous communities.
What will happen next with trains ordered nearly three years ago? The ministry estimates that the design of the future units will be ready during this summer, with production going immediately afterward, with delivery arriving no later than 2026, two years later than originally planned.
Barbón and Revilla, who will present a joint document to the Minister with their request, demand that the manufacturing process be expedited as much as possible and that a possible ‘partial delivery’ be investigated one by one, as the units are ready. On the other hand, they are demanding compensatory measures such as free commuter trains until 2026, more investment, time changes, a fixed schedule of work done and more trains until the end of production. The answer to all these requests is tomorrow.