Renfe has reached an agreement with CAF, Adif and the Railway Safety Agency (AESF) to unclog the problem with the gauges of the new metric-gauge trains intended for suburban and medium-distance services mainly in Cantabria, but also for Asturias, Basque Country, Galicia, Castilla y León and Murcia.
The president of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla, has asked that those responsible for the "botch" of the trains be dismissed. "That those responsible for this situation be dismissed and, most importantly, that he tell us in what period those trains are going to be delivered to us," he asked this Friday.
"We are going to see who has made the very serious mistake of putting out to tender a project that was not viable to the extent that the width of the gauges of the tunnels that we have both here and in Asturias did not coincide with the size of the trains that they were going to manufacture," he said.
As indicated, the leader of the Cantabrian Executive held a meeting this Thursday with the president of Asturias, Adrián Barbón, who "is as outraged as I am and they had not given him a convincing explanation either."
Although neither party has confirmed the length of time it will take to solve this problem, it is estimated that the construction of the trains that have not yet been manufactured will take around three years, and some procedures still need to be arranged so that the solution agreed can be carried out.
Specifically, the AESF has to authorize the application of a method that does not include Spanish regulations but the European one, and develop its procedures, according to Renfe sources. This is the so-called 'comparative method', which consists of using a train that currently runs on the lines as a reference for the new trains that Renfe will provide.
CAF will also have to hire a company specialized in the application of this method and the contract between Renfe and the company will have to be modified to introduce a monitoring of the project with that reference train. For its part, Adif will also have to provide the infrastructure characterization data and commit to keeping it within the same parameters.
The origin of the problem lies in the gauges published in the Adif network statement, which Renfe used to describe the technical characteristics of the new trains in a contract that it published in 2019 to acquire 31 metric gauge trains, intended to renew the commuter and medium-distance network fleet, mainly in the north of the country.
In June 2020, Renfe awarded this contract to CAF, a manufacturer of trains and buses based in the Basque Country, for 258 million euros. When preparing the project, CAF realized that there was an error in the gauges and that the tracks would not support the trains ordered, and they transferred this to their client, Renfe.
During all this time, all the parties have studied the different possible solutions, such as applying the established gauges, but which would force the manufacture of trains with much smaller dimensions than the current ones, which would impact passenger benefits.
It was also considered adapting the infrastructure, which would lead to long execution times and high costs, or applying an exception. Finally, the comparative method was decided, with which all parties, who regret the delay, believe that the impact will be minimized.
The contract awarded in 2020 set the contract execution period at 220 months, around 18 years and four months. As it included 15-year maintenance of some units, the remaining three years and four months would be the term for the manufacture of the trains, although they are normally delivered progressively. Therefore, the first trains should have been ready by October 2024 at the latest.
The Vice President of the Government, Pablo Zuloaga, has assured that the Ministry of Transport is "eager to give explanations in Cantabria" for the failure in the dimensions of the Cercanías trains.
"The problem that the Cercanías trains in Cantabria are old is not from 2023, nor from 2022, when the Government of Spain decided to buy new trains for the Cercanías; it is a problem that goes back much further," he pointed out.
In this sense, he has responded to the PP, which yesterday spoke of a "new ridicule of the Sánchez-Revilla Government." "The only thing that is going to happen is that some trains that have been tendered and awarded are going to arrive in Cantabria," he assured, while stating that the Popular Party "had the opportunity to solve the problem much earlier and decided to look to other side".
"We are aware that 21 units were not going to arrive on the same day; the trains are manufactured in a process. Therefore, I think it is absolutely necessary that the Ministry, Adif, Renfe and the Government Delegation in Cantabria explain when it will the first unit to arrive to know that later there will be 20 more to solve the problems suffered by thousands of Cantabrians with trains that have been running on our land for longer than I have on it", he stressed.
