Rodalies will not be operating at full capacity this Monday either. At 9:10 p.m. This Sunday, Renfe has reported that only one Rodalies line will be fully operational by train, while the rest will have to continue carrying out several sections with alternative bus service.
The Renfe statement dismantles, once again, the plans of the Government, which had announced that this Monday Rodalies would return to operating as before the last crisis. Reality has denied the Catalan Executive, as happened last week.
The trains on which 400,000 Catalans depend will continue at half throttle. Convoys will circulate on line R1, with the exception of the section between Blanes and Maçanet-Massanes, which will be covered by coach.
The R2 will only operate normally in the northern section, while in the south Renfe has reported a new “incident in the infrastructure” that reduces trains per hour per direction to two. The R3 will continue to be covered by road from Fabra i Puig, in Barcelona, until the end of the route, in Puigcerdà.
On the R4, between Sant Vicenç de Calders and Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, the service is provided by train; between Sant Sadurní and Martorell Central, by road; between Martorell Central and Terrassa-Estació del Nord, by train, and between Terrassa-Estació del Nord and Manresa, alternative service by road.
On the R7, alternative road service is provided derived from the works scheduled in Montcada Bifurcació.
On the R8 there is an alternative road service between Martorell and Mollet Sant Fost, where travelers can continue on the R2 North trains.
On the R11, between Barcelona Sants and Figueres/Portbou, the service will be provided by train, as on the RG1, between Maçanet-Massanes and Portbou.
The RL3 does not present any changes and the service is carried out by train, while on the RL4 the Lleida-Cervera section is by train and the Cervera-Manresa section is by bus.
As for the Regionals, on the R13 and R14 the Lleida-Vinaixa section will be done by train. The Vinaixa-Sant Vicenç de Calders section of the R13 and the Vinaixa-Reus section of the R14 are planned with buses.
On the R15, the Reus-Barcelona section is done by train and the one from Reus to Riba-roja d’Ebre, passing through Móra la Nova, will continue to be covered by bus.
The R16, R17 and RT2 offer train service, and RT1 provides train service to Reus and alternative road service to La Plana de Picamoixons.
Rodalies is experiencing its worst crisis since a trainee train driver died on January 20 when a wall fell on the track in Gelida (Barcelona). To the usual delays, there was added a labor conflict with the train drivers, the lack of coordination between Renfe, Adif and the Government and the security review of a network that has accumulated years of disinvestment.
After five days without trains and a chaotic Monday due to a failure in the Adif center, the rest of the week Rodalies has operated at half throttle, with widespread delays and doped with buses that replace the train in the sections in which it is not possible to circulate on the tracks.
This same Sunday, Adif has reported that it is working at 31 points on the railway network to carry out repairs to recover sections of the lines where there is still no train service, which are added to the 179 points where train drivers have to reduce speed for safety.
Adif’s plan involves increasing inspections in sensitive areas of the network and urgent emergency repair works at the affected points. To date, more than 400 inspections have been carried out in trenches, slopes, tunnels, bridges, platforms, tracks and other structures on all lines.
Techniques pay special attention to trams near the coast (Barcelona-Vilanova- Barcelona-Giron-Figs or Castles.
This Saturday, the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, already lowered expectations and limited himself to guaranteeing “mobility”, with trains or buses as an alternative service, although he did not specify which part of the Rodalies network would reopen. On Tuesday, the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, had stated that the trains would return “to normal” on Monday. It won’t be like that.
Source: www.eldiario.es
