Adif and Rodalies will take Siemens to court for today's double train stoppage

BarcelonaCatalonia's railway network was briefly paralyzed on Tuesday on two occasions. While at midday trains in the Barcelona area were suspended for half an hour due to an incident at the Traffic Control Center (CCT) at Estació de França, Adif reported that traffic was interrupted again three hours later, at 3:30 PM, this time affecting all of Catalonia. The stoppages would be attributed to the IT management of the CCT by the company Siemens. Although both incidents were brief and technical teams were able to restore service a few minutes after publicly reporting the general breakdown, delays are expected to persist throughout the day. In response to these errors, both Adif and Rodalies have announced that they will initiate "legal action against Siemens".

"This is not the first time Siemens has failed in managing the control center in Barcelona. This is a situation that has occurred on other occasions and is therefore repeated. Adif considers this situation unjustified, inadmissible, unacceptable, and absolutely intolerable," stated the manager of the railway infrastructure in Catalonia in a statement. "[Siemens] is responsible for providing the IT support to ensure the operation of Adif's systems that regulate traffic and is therefore responsible for a situation affecting thousands of Catalan users," they added. Furthermore, the public company will initiate an investigation to ascertain the circumstances of what happened and, where appropriate, apply the relevant penalties against Siemens.

As reported by Siemens this evening, both breakdowns occurred "within the framework of a corrective maintenance intervention." In a statement, the company regrets the inconvenience caused by the incident and adds that the root cause of the incident is currently subject to technical analysis "without definitive conclusions." It also emphasizes that the system has been restored and is operational, and that they are working with Adif to provide "necessary support."

For their part, the CEO of Rodalies, Òscar Playà, has also asked the legal services to evaluate all options for taking action against the technology company for its actions concerning the IT system provided by Adif. The Department of Territory considers the outage "intolerable" and indicates that the legal action "that will be most useful for claiming from the company" will be chosen.

The first failure occurred at 12:25 PM. The service was stopped due to an incident in the traffic regulation systems, from which signals, points (track changes), overhead lines, and other key elements for train operation are monitored in real-time. Until the technicians could solve the problem – around 1:00 PM – and it was verified that traffic could resume safely, the operator – that is, Renfe – had to suspend the service of the lines operating in Barcelona. The second stop was shorter than the first, lasting about 20 minutes, but in this case, the scope was total: it affected all commuter rail lines in the country.

As a consequence of these two failures, passenger frequencies and schedules were altered. The morning incident, which was longer, affected lines R1, R2, R3, R4, R8, R11, R14, R15, R16, R17, RG1, RL3, RL4, RT1, RT2. According to Adif, from 1:00 PM onwards, the service began to be restored "progressively," but the commuter rail network is experiencing widespread delays of up to 30 minutes, as reported by Rodalies. This is because, when there is a system failure, the entire railway operation is altered in a chain reaction.

Given this situation, Adif has announced that it will initiate "the necessary judicial actions" once the incident has been analyzed and all information about the facts is available. "The two failures are Siemens' responsibility and, therefore, Adif is forced to take these measures in defense of a quality public service for Catalan users," Adif stated in the same press release.

A new software

The Minister of Territory and Government spokesperson, Sílvia Paneque, had already pointed out at noon that the incident could be due to the implementation of the new security software. In a press conference after Tuesday's executive council, she explained that the Renfe and Adif operations centers are currently being unified, and that in this process a new Siemens security software is being implemented which has generated "some problems that the company is already adjusting", and she stated that the system will be much more secure when it is fully implemented.

"Surely when it comes out I will have information about what the cause has been in this case, but unfortunately the implementation of this new system is giving us some problems," she said at the press conference, which coincided with the moment of the incident and the start of the service recovery.

Paneque warned that there will be some delays in train circulation while the incident is resolved. "Work is being done to stop these incidents from happening," she assured. Regarding the afternoon incident, there is not much data yet. Adif has limited itself to saying that "technicians are collecting information".

The incidents coincide with the arrival of Pope Leo XIV in Barcelona, an event for which Renfe had designed a reinforcement plan for the commuter lines, with 35% more capacity.