Adif and Rodalies will take Siemens to court for today's double train stoppage
The Government suspects that the two incidents are due to the implementation of new software for railway traffic control
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 p.m., 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. It is a situation that has occurred on other occasions and, therefore, it is 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 therefore, is responsible for a situation affecting thousands of Catalan users," it added. Furthermore, the public company will initiate proceedings to ascertain the circumstances of what happened and, if applicable, apply the relevant penalties against Siemens.
For its part, the CEO of Rodalies, Òscar Playà, has also asked the legal services to evaluate all options to take action against the technology company for its actions regarding the IT system that Adif provides. The Department of Territory considers the outage "intolerable" and indicates that the legal action chosen will be the one "that is most useful for claiming from the company".
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 technicians were able to resolve 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 stoppage was shorter than the first, lasting about 20 minutes, but in this case, the scope was total: it affected all suburban lines in the country.
As a consequence of these two failures, service frequencies and schedules have been 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 suburban network is experiencing generalized 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.
In view of this situation, Adif has announced that it will initiate "the necessary legal actions" once the incident has been analyzed and all information about the facts is available. "Both failures are the responsibility of Siemens 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 spokesperson for the Government, Sílvia Paneque, had already pointed out at midday that the incident could be due to the implementation of the new security software. In a press conference after the executive council meeting this Tuesday, she explained that the operations centers of Renfe and Adif are currently being unified, and that in this process a new security software from Siemens is being implemented which has generated "some problems that the company is already adjusting", and she affirmed that the system will be much more secure when it is fully implemented.
"Surely when it comes out I will have information on what the cause was 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 time of the incident and the start of the service recovery.
Paneque warned that there will be some delays in train traffic while the incident is being resolved. "Work is being done to stop these incidents from occurring," she assured. Regarding the afternoon incident, there is still not much data at the moment. 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.
