The Catalan government expects to restore "normal" service on commuter trains starting Monday.

BarcelonaA week after the tragic accident in Gelida, and after seven days of unprecedented chaos that culminated on Monday with two dismissals at Renfe and Adif, the commuter rail service resumed operations on Tuesday. However, it was operating at reduced capacity, with numerous line and section closures and up to ten alternative bus services. The main development was that service started at 6:00 a.m., "as planned," according to Renfe spokesperson Antonio Carmona. The Catalan government anticipates that the commuter rail service will return to "normal" operation next Monday, with no alternative services remaining on the vast majority of the network. This was confirmed by the Minister of Territory and spokesperson for the Catalan government, Sílvia Paneque, who added that the government will not be "satisfied" until the service is "reliable." Starting this weekend, service will gradually resume on the sections currently being inspected to ensure safety.

The rail operator continues working with Adif technicians to reopen the sections of track that remain closed following yesterday's double technical failure, which left all of Catalonia without trains twice during the morning rush hour. Adif President Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña confirmed that the failure was not due to any "sabotage or cyberattack," but rather to an error in new, "state-of-the-art" software. He also guaranteed that the problem has been resolved.

While efforts continue to restore service across all lines "with all safety guarantees," trains on the busiest lines have been operating on combined routes with sections served only by road, using a fleet of 146 buses available to passengers. On the R1 line, for example, an alternative service has been enabled between Arenys and Maçanet, while on the R4 line, the same is true between Sant Sadurní d'Anoia and Martorell Central, and between Terrassa and Estació del Nord-Manresa. Trains, however, are running along the entire R2 route, both north and south. Carmona (Renfe) has maintained that the current service is "sufficient to guarantee the mobility of people who want to use Cercanías (commuter rail)" and has assured that the goal is to "regain passenger confidence" as soon as possible. For one more day, and to compensate for the inconvenience, Cercanías, Regional, and Media Distancia (medium-distance) season tickets are free. Free tickets can be obtained at ticket offices or self-service machines in the stations, although on the ground—and despite the 700 information officers deployed for the resumption of service—not everyone is aware of this.

As ARA has observed, for example, some R4 users in Cerdanyola validated their pre-purchased tickets without anyone reminding them that it wasn't necessary, while others were surprised to see the barriers working to access the platforms. "Isn't it free?" they wondered. In other parts of the country, some passengers gave up after the debacle of the last few days and opted for high-speed rail or, simply, for traveling by car. "I'd rather get stuck in traffic on the ring roads than take a train," a passenger traveling from Sils (La Selva) to Barcelona explained to ACN.

Those who opted for high-speed rail didn't have a smooth morning either, with trains accumulating delays of more than an hour. Sources at Renfe have admitted that Adif's speed restrictions—imposed following the fatal accident in Adamuz—are impacting all operators and also affecting train drivers' shifts, causing delays due to driver changes. This has led a dozen train user groups, including the Public Transport Promotion Association (PTP) and Dignity on the Tracks, to call for a demonstration in Barcelona on February 7th. The march, which aims to denounce the "systematic disinvestment" in the rail network, will proceed from França Station to Plaça Sant Jaume.

"This has never happened before."

The rail chaos on Monday led to the first dismissals: the operational director of Cercanías (commuter rail), Josep Enric Garcia Alemany, and the operations director of Adif (Spain's railway infrastructure manager), Raúl Míguez Bailo. These two dismissals have allowed the Catalan and Spanish governments to temporarily shield the Minister and Regional Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente and Sílvia Paneque. However, questions and demands for accountability continue, with Junts (the Catalan left-wing coalition) now calling for legal action against Renfe (the national railway company) and Adif, alleging that the lives of Catalans were "endangered." The first to offer explanations this morning regarding Monday's crisis at the Adif control center was the Secretary of State for Transport, José Antonio Santano. In statements to Catalunya Ràdio, he asserted that what went wrong "had never happened before." "A new software failed [...] Those who control the service, high-level technologists [from Siemens] contracted by Adif, have explained to us why it failed, how they fixed it, and have given us full guarantees that it cannot happen again," he said.

Adif's president, Luis Pedro Marco de la Peña, also defended the situation, explaining that the double failure was in a new software program being tested at night on the R1 line, which should ultimately guarantee much greater "reliability." The problem, he said, was that the system received commands from both the old and new software, causing a security shutdown. De la Peña explained that the company that supplied the new software has admitted it was an error and has already corrected it. They have also permanently assigned technical personnel to the CTC (Centralized Traffic Control) system as a precaution.