More than half of commuter trains fail to comply with the schedule, according to Renfe itself.

BarcelonaThe Spanish train operator Renfe, which manages the trains that run on the Cercanías de Catalunya service (among others), decided this week to undertake a transparency exercise and publish its punctuality and delay data across the country. They did so through their transparency and good governance portal, using data updated through September of this year. The first figure that stands out is obvious: according to the company's calculations, only 47.7% of trains run on schedule. In other words, more than half of the trains do not meet established schedules and arrive later than scheduled at the various stations and stops along their route.

This figure is not surprising considering the daily complaints from users, but this is the first time the operator has published these figures. However, Renfe insists in its speech that not all the data is bad, and along with the schedule compliance figure (which is the most negative), it adds other graphs that demonstrate that the service is not performing so badly. Thus, although the company admits that schedule compliance in Catalonia is not its strong suit—the spokespersons clarify that "schedule compliance" takes into account all stops along the route—at the same time they point out that 94.9% of commuter trains arrive punctually at their destination (without taking into account the stops in between): that is, on time at 5.

But how then can it be explained that more than half of the trains do not comply with the schedule between stations, but, on the other hand, punctuality at their destination is "excellent"? Company spokespersons argue that, "despite delays in arriving at the various stops along the route," the trains can "make up for these minutes" and, therefore, "finish the journey at the destination stop on schedule" or with only a slight delay of at most five minutes. This is confirmed, they claim, by the technical control centers, which monitor the location of each of the trains Renfe has in motion at all times.

In addition to schedule adherence and punctuality, the operator has also provided other data to the public this week, such as regularity and service compliance. Regularity refers to the frequency of trains, meaning that "even if they are delayed, the journeys continue to run," and therefore mobility is guaranteed. In this case, the company assures that this parameter is met at 74.5% in the case of Rodalies Catalunya. And regarding service compliance (i.e., whether trains run—delayed or not—or whether they are cancelled or canceled), the operator states that compliance exceeds 96%.

However, the average delay for delayed trains ranged from 17 to 25 minutes on average between January and September. July was the most problematic month, with the coincidence of many damaged and suppressed trains and delays due to the different works in progressThese figures are double those recorded by the Madrid commuter rail service. There, average delays, according to the company's data, were limited to 11 to 12 minutes, with a 70% adherence rate.

Criticism from user organizations and associations

"We have been denouncing for a long time that the punctuality of the Catalan commuter rail service is truly deficient, and it is one of the main problems we have," states Adrià Ramírez, president of the Public Transport Promotion Association. From the southern corridor user platform Dignitat a les Vies, they add that, furthermore, the data provided by Renfe does not include regional trains, which in Catalonia operate in practice as an extension of the commuter rail system and which also suffer delays due to roadworks, breakdowns, and outages. "[The delays] are something we are very clear about as a perception, and that is why we ask Renfe, Adif, and the Generalitat (Catalan government) to make open data available to users; to publish baseline data and not just indicators, so that any citizen, entity, or journalist, for example, can access this real data," Ramírez claims.

In fact, the publication of these company data coincided last Monday with another – unofficial – presentation of railway data: the one made by entities in favor of public transport and user platforms. These groups have joined forces to move forward and promote a new website that collects and makes available to passengers all railway service delays, line by line and operator by operator, so that they can decide on a transport plan. This is the punctual.cat website, which extracts information from open data of operators and infrastructure managers and also from the Transporta'm app, which uses the same data collection system to perform cross-referencing and inform users.

The website is the final university project of a young man, Cuando van der Knokke, who contacted Dignidad en las Vías to offer to create the website. "The result is a website pass, where an analysis of all the delays can be carried out in much more detail than any of the indicators we've seen so far," says Ramírez. Dignidad en las Vías spokesperson Ana Gómez adds that "the data from punctuality.cat and Renfe don't match, but, on the other hand, that of Ferrocarriles de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC) does." "And it's not fair to us to be told that the services aren't comparable due to their size, because there are small, simple lines where comparisons can be made and where it's clear that some cause many more problems than others and, therefore, aren't managed well either," she says. Gómez also points out that, at this time, both Transporta'm (which already has more than 51,000 registered users) and punctuality.cat, which was launched a few days ago, are being financially supported privately thanks to the support of a few users.