Puente responds to the "desperation" with Rodalies: "Everything will improve"

Barcelona"High-level" meeting at the Palau de la Generalitat to address the eternal crisis in Rodalies. President Salvador Illa and Minister Sílvia Paneque received Minister of Transport Óscar Puente, the Secretary of State for the sector, José Antonio Santano, and the presidents of Renfe, Adif, and Rodalies de Catalunya this Thursday morning in a meeting that Puente described as "monographic". The topic? The problems of Rodalies. Upon leaving, the minister admitted that he understands the users' frustration and promised them that everything "will improve".

"We are working very hard to improve the service and we will achieve it, I have no doubt about it. I know that when the train stops people get desperate, and it is normal, but we are opening a new stage, with proximity governance, with more investments than ever that will be noticed," the minister assured. "We are still in an incipient phase; we are making a great economic effort and I want to communicate one clear thing to the users: have no doubt, the results will be seen," said Puente. The minister also sounded the mea culpa and admitted that perhaps he should have been more on top of the communication: "I, who am a person accustomed to communicating, perhaps have ceded too much space on this issue and I should come out more".

Puente made these statements after the government meeting in which the most important issues affecting the Rodalies network were addressed: from the arrival of the new Alstom trains, to the transfer of the R1, passing through all the works, investments, and problems derived from the storms. "We must be humble and realistic, but we are working a lot," insisted the minister, who boasted that while 630 incidents were recorded during the January storm, this autumn "there have only been 14". According to Puente, this decrease is explained by all the emergency investment, of about 200 million, made after the January storm.

The transfer, the trains that do not arrive, and the electoral calendar

Another of the key points of the meeting was to specify when the transfer of the R1 will take place, the first Rodalies line that was agreed would leave the Spanish network to become fully under Catalan management. On this point, Puente and Illa were brief: "We continue working with the same schedules", that is to say, with the fact that the transfer will be signed in November, as Minister Paneque recently pointed out or, in any case, before the end of the year 2026, just as they have already announced several times.

On the other hand, Puente added an unknown factor and admitted that the calling of elections could "disrupt" the R1 schedule, but he showed himself determined to move it forward. "On November 29th nothing ends, it is a continuation", he said.

Regarding the more than 110 trains that still have to arrive, Minister Puente specified that, finally, the first batch of trains –they do not arrive all at once, but progressively– could be operational in the first quarter of next year "or even earlier". This schedule corrects what just a few days ago was commented by Secretary Santano, who placed this date in the spring.

What does seem more settled is the new program contract with Renfe, which has been expired since December 2010. Both Illa and Puente have clarified that it is already prepared and will go for approval next Tuesday, both at the Council of Ministers and the Catalan Executive Council.