By chance, the political pact for the (new) transfer of Rodalies to the Generalitat has coincided with the 175th anniversary of the first train that was built on the Iberian Peninsula and that linked Barcelona with Mataró. Its main promoter was Miquel Biada, who contributed money from his own pocket and convinced a group of investors to finance a project that received permission from the State in 1843 and was inaugurated five years later. Look at the short time that passed from when the plan was approved until the work on the almost thirty kilometers of “iron road” was completed and compare it with what any public project costs us today.
For example, the AVE between Madrid and Barcelona took 16 years to become a reality and 21 to reach the French border. Or the Sagrera station whose project was approved in 1997, but its works did not begin until eleven years later and it is still under construction until, they say, the end of 2025. Not to mention the famous line 9 of the Barcelona metro, planned in 1999 and which has continued under construction since 2003 with the latest completion date in 2029, no less than thirty years, at an average of one kilometer per year. Without forgetting, the desperate Mediterranean Corridor that has accumulated more than 20 years of delays and there is no end in sight. It is clear that Miquel Biada took his know-how to the grave, because if he raised his head today he would not believe how ineffective we are.
In this sense, read the text of the agreement closed last week between the PSOE and ERC to facilitate the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. This document recalls that the first agreement to transfer Rodalies was in 2009 and now it is explicitly stated that it has not been fulfilled. Fourteen years after that failed political commitment and countless promises of millions in investments in the train network in Catalonia that never arrived, this issue returns to the governments' table, driven by the anger of the hundreds of thousands of train users. Rodalies who suffer from a clearly precarious and always unfortunate service in the distribution of public investments.
The new agreement for the transfer of Rodalies determines that, at a minimum, ownership of the R1 railway infrastructure will be transferred to the Generalitat, precisely the one that is now 175 years old and that transports 100,000 people daily. Users of this line must wonder what they will gain with this transfer. The response that comes from the Government of Catalonia is that management from proximity will improve the service and they give as an example the good functioning of Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat. There is no other choice but to hope that this is the case because the problem deserves the agility and effectiveness that Biada showed in the 19th century. Dear passenger, he already knows that hope is the last thing to be lost because, in his case, patience has already been lost.
