The face and the cross of Rodalies: the Garraf tunnels reopen Monday, but the works on the R3 are delayed again

BarcelonaOne cold and one hot at the works that Adif has underway on the Catalan road network. The work on the Garraf railway tunnels has finished a week earlier than planned and will be able to reopen next Monday the 8th. On the other hand, the infrastructure manager has reported that the R3 works are being extended again: the first phase, which was due to open last May, will not be completed until the end of the year.

The individuals responsible for making these two announcements were the Secretary of State for Transport, José Antonio Santano, and the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, who this Wednesday afternoon visited the works on the Garraf tunnels. This work began last March and aimed to remedy the wear and tear that this infrastructure has suffered from sea corrosion. The Garraf railway tunnels and the bridges – in the parts where the tracks pass uncovered – are very close to the sea, hanging from the mountain, and the saltpeter, wind, and waves had greatly eroded their structure.

During this time, the works – which have cost almost 4 million euros – have forced the trains on the southern corridor to run on a single track between Sitges and Garraf, which has greatly complicated travel and affected the capacity of lines R2 Sud, R13, R14, R15, R16, and R17. Now, as explained by Minister Paneque, starting Monday, white or test runs will begin, without passengers, and by the end of the week, trains could be running again with the normality prior to the closures.

The maintenance of this infrastructure was one of the historical demands of users and unions to guarantee its safety, but it is not the only one. The tunnels were built more than a century ago and have serious safety deficiencies: they are very narrow and have no emergency exits. In fact, for years there has been a project on the table to build another tunnel, completely new, on the mountain side. Until now it had no date, but this Wednesday Santano has given more details. It is a work that the ministry is still deciding "how it will be done" but which is estimated to have a cost of more than 280 million euros and could begin "at the end of next year", Santano pointed out. "It is a very powerful, strategic and future-oriented work that will also have a certain impact; but the works must be done", he justified.

La R3, the eternal victim

And if the R2 South will improve "in a few days", according to Paneque, on the other side of the scale is the R3: the works of the first phase were supposed to end in May, but an unforeseen event has caused them to be extended until the end of the year or the beginning of next year. The reason? The collapse of a wall adjacent to the works of Montcada Bifurcació, owned by a cement company, as 3CatInfo reported in May.

This Wednesday Santano acknowledged that the impact is significant and that until now they had not found a way to resolve how to fix the slope. "The wall has a significant impact, but at this moment we can explain that there is already a closed agreement (by Adif) with the cement company: we have agreed on the technical solution and Adif will carry it out, even though the wall is private," Santano resolved.

Thus, this impediment will cause the end of the first section of the works (between Montcada Bifurcació and Les Franqueses del Vallès) to coincide with the end of the second section, between Parets and la Garriga, and the work will be reopened all at once, at the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027: sixteen months after its start, if the schedule does not fail again.