The Ministry of Transport is preparing the "imminent" dismissal of those responsible for a serious error in the design of a package of 31 trains for Cantabria and Asturias. A problem when calculating the gauge that would have caused, in the event that the convoys had been put into operation, that they would not fit in the tunnels of the current railway lines in the north of the peninsula. The head of the department, Raquel Sánchez, yesterday apologized to the affected citizens and announced "cessations" in the next few hours at Renfe and Adif.
It is one of the biggest failures that occurred in the ministry that plans infrastructures. Minister Sánchez explained, during a visit to the Castro Urdiales Town Hall, that she had a conversation with the President of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla, to share the "anger" and "outrage" over a problem that is going to cause the new trains to take time to be operational three more years.
The Minister and the Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Isabel Pardo de Vera, have commissioned an internal audit at both Renfe and Adif to "know and find out in detail what happened." After the first conclusions, eyes are directed mainly towards the company chaired by Isaías Tabóas, say sources familiar with the investigation. The railway operator could not adequately interpret the gauges published in the so-called "network declaration" and establish an erroneous instruction for the design of the trains, taking as reference the measures already existing in the railway layouts. However, the scope of the instruction was only for new or upgraded lines, not for those already in operation. Transport is aware that since at least March 2021 the infrastructure has had a height problem, but it was not until the beginning of this year that the problem was solved.
It is not the first time that Renfe has accumulated problems with the Ministry of Transport. To the serious error with these trains to the north, we must add the delay of the Avril high-speed trains to different parts of the country.
The origin of the problem of the trains for Cantabria and Asturias was in a gauge error in the 31 metric gauge devices, a contract of 258 million euros. The measurements published in the statement on the Adif network, which Renfe used to describe the technical characteristics of the new trains in 2019, were misinterpreted, so that machines higher than the permitted height were designed. When Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF), the winning company, made progress on the project, it discovered the ruling and transferred it to Renfe.
The operator, for its part, announced last Friday that it has reached an agreement with CAF, the manufacturer of the trains, to try to solve the error in the gauges as soon as possible. In this way, the Railway Safety Agency (AESF) will have to approve the application of a procedure that does not include Spanish regulations, but the European one, and develop the so-called "comparative method", which consists of using of a train that currently runs on the lines as a reference for the new trains, which 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 must also provide the infrastructure characterization data and commit to keeping it within the same parameters.
