The Minister of Transport Raquel Sánchez In addition, the head of Transport has assured that the new model will be designed in summer, to start manufacturing it immediately.
The Ministry is going to set up a working group, to which it will invite the governments of the two communities to participate, to monitor the entire process and has already commissioned an internal audit at Renfe and Adif to “be able to determine in greater detail when produced that error.”
“My hand is not going to tremble to clear up responsibilities and obviously there are going to be imminent dismissals both in Renfe and in Adif to assume the responsibilities of this error”, said the minister during a visit to Castro Urdiales, who has transferred “a message of apology” to the Cantabrians and has indicated that this Friday he had a conversation with the president of Cantabria, Miguel Ángel Revilla, to share “anger and indignation”.
“In the next few hours these stoppages are going to take place and, therefore, we will give the explanations at that time,” explained Sánchez, who has commissioned an internal audit at both Renfe and Adif to “know and know in detail what is what happened.”
In addition, he has asserted that “all the necessary actions” will be taken to shorten the delay in the delivery of the trains, recalling that they are not manufactured, but in the design phase. The minister hopes that the design of these trains will be ready for the summer and that their manufacture can begin immediately, although there is no minimum manufacturing time.
problem with gauges
The origin of the problem lies in the gauges published in the Adif network statement, which Renfe used to describe the technical characteristics of the new trains in a contract that it published in 2019 to acquire 31 metric gauge trains, intended to renew the commuter and medium-distance network fleet, mainly in the north of the country.
In June 2020, Renfe awarded this contract to CAF, a manufacturer of trains and buses based in the Basque Country, for 258 million euros. When preparing the project, CAF realized that there was an error in the gauges and that the tracks would not support the trains ordered, and they transferred it to their client, Renfe.
The contract awarded in 2020 set the contract execution period at 220 months, around 18 years and four months. As the 15-year maintenance of some units appeared, the remaining three years and four months were the term for the manufacture of the trains, although they are normally delivered progressively. For this reason, the first trains must have been ready by October 2024 at the latest.
Although neither party has confirmed the length of time it will take to solve this problem, it is estimated that the construction of the trains that have not yet been manufactured will take around three years, and some procedures still need to be arranged so that the solution agreed can be carried out. In addition to the Cercanías trains in Cantabria and Asturias, the Basque Country, Galicia, Castilla y León and Murcia are also affected.
