Renfe is discouraging platforms and organizations with a third alternative plan for the closure of the R3 line.

BarcelonaRenfe and the government have again flatly rejected the third alternative plan put forward today by train user platforms to make up for the lack of trains on the R3 line during the upcoming expansion works, which will last sixteen months. This Wednesday, to guarantee road mobility while the track work continues, the government and the operator agreed on a new bus offer, this time halfway between the one they announced with great fanfare at the beginning of June and the halved version that Renfe unilaterally decided to bid for at the end of June.

The operator claims there are not enough buses available in the sector, but the platforms disagree. "We believe that the decision has simply been made to reduce costs without taking into account users' needs for the service," denounce Porque No Nos Foten el Tren (Because They Don't Foten Us on the Train) and the Association for the Promotion of Public Transport (PTP). According to these platforms, the service will be insufficient: of the hundred direct buses that were supposed to be activated between La Garriga and Barcelona (with 600 daily trips and frequencies of thirty minutes), there will finally only be eight daily trips in each direction from La Garriga.

The serial about this alternative plan has been going on for a month and a half. If it was announced on June 11 that it would be donean "unprecedented" investment of 68 million euros to set up a device which would operate every day of the week with the main exchange headquarters in Centelles (plan A), the last week of June,Renfe Viajeros (in Madrid) unilaterally decided to stop this bidding and call for another that substantially cut the plan by half. At that time, according to municipal sources in the area, the operator's management claimed that the decision to cut the plan came directly from Madrid.

This Plan B reduced resources to 45 million and buses to 58 million, and also changed the epicenter of the transfers from Centelles to La Garriga. A change that took both municipalities and user associations as well as the Government by surprise. In fact, the Regional Minister for Territory, Silvia Paneque, assured that "the [plan] that had been initially announced would be maintained."

At that time, moreover, the mayor of La Garriga, Meritxell Budó, assured that a delegation from Renfe, headed by the operational director Josep Enric Garcia Alemany, had visited the municipality to carry out tests and had It was noted that La Garriga could not function as an intermodal hub. Because "the buses don't go through some of the streets at all." "We did tests and the bus had to reverse a couple of times," Budó explained to ARA.

La Garriga: from a hub to eight buses a day

Now this new plan C corrects this point and does not place La Garriga as hub, but it leaves the municipality with only eight daily journeys, far fewer than it needs, according to user complaints. And La Garriga, there would also be no buses making the La Garriga-Mollet del Vallès bypass, "which in the absence of direct La Garriga-Barcelona buses for much of the day would be the ones that could offer minimally acceptable journey times."

The platforms also point out that, on the other hand, Vic already has the direct e12 service to Barcelona. "There are going to be gaps of up to 3 hours between trains," they complain.