How long will the chaos on the commuter rail system last?
It's unbelievable that we've already had two weeks of chaos on the commuter rail network. How can this be? How can we have the country practically paralyzed, with thousands of people whose daily commutes are disrupted and with increasingly serious repercussions for the economic system? How can the State, responsible for Adif and Renfe, have reacted so slowly and with so few results, leaving the Catalan government out in the cold?
More questions: what role have the train drivers actually played and are they playing in this colossal service failure? How can Adif's software systems crash repeatedly and no one be able to offer even the slightest technical explanation? Doesn't this happen in the rest of Spain? And regarding the rail infrastructure as a whole, will anyone ever clarify what kind of maintenance was in place until now? What does it mean that Adif announced this Wednesday the creation of a unit to reinforce "preventive maintenance" on the Catalan rail system to "anticipate" possible incidents? And what about up until now? Perhaps it was simply irresponsible neglect? By the way, who came up with the idea of dividing railway management between Adif and Renfe, and why wasn't this reversed before the breakdown in communication between the two organizations? And also, what accounts for the stark difference between the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat service and that of Renfe-Adif? In short, when will someone with authority come forward to explain what happened and detail exactly what is being done to prevent it from happening again? Believing in a federal Spain would also mean accepting a real and well-funded transfer of commuter rail services. Now more than ever.
While the crisis in rail and road services (AP-7) drags on, unanswered questions pile up, and behind them, besides a multi-million euro cost that must be borne by the State, responsible for an endemic lack of investment in commuter rail, lies the assumption and the game. The resignations so far—including the one announced yesterday—have been low-profile. We have settled into a permanent, lamentable disaster. On Saturday we will know to what extent the Catalan population has succumbed to resigned fatalism or whether, outraged, they will take to the streets to demand immediate solutions and guarantees that such a debacle will not happen again.
Can a dynamic and modern economy like Catalonia's afford such a severe and seemingly endless mobility crisis? Without reliable, high-quality public transport, we run a growing risk of missing out on opportunities. Directly or indirectly, the Catalan economic ecosystem is suffering in terms of freight logistics and passenger mobility. How long will this shameful chaos continue? Every day the situation becomes more unsustainable. It's not that we've returned to the past, when Renfe was a laughingstock during decades of dictatorship; it's that things have gotten worse. It's no longer just about delays; it's about service failures and a lack of safety. It's a complete disaster.