The Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, has accused the Government of the Generalitat of running an electoral campaign with Rodalies and has demanded that it sign the program contract with Renfe to determine the obligations of both parties. In statements to La 2 and Rà dio 4, Sánchez responded in this way to the President Pere Aragonès and the Minister of Territory, Juli Fernández, who yesterday charged hard against the Government for the incident registered on Tuesday on the R2 line.
“The Generalitat, beyond campaigning, must comply with its obligations,” said Raquel Sánchez, referring to the program contract with Renfe -which establishes the obligations of the operator and the owner of the service-, which the Government has not yet signed , despite the claims of the minister. “The Generalitat never talks about this and does not explain what reasons it has for not signing it,” the head of Transport has complained.
Yesterday in Parliament, the president and the Regional Minister pointed directly to the PSC and the Government to hold them responsible for the fault that has affected the Rodalies R2 line since Tuesday. Juli Fernández reproached the Spanish Executive for neglecting its functions, in his opinion, and not offering alternative road transport, something that the Government did, he affirmed. “Whoever owns the service has not done so,” Fernández snapped. This morning, the Minister for Transport addressed the Minister to remind him that “the owner of the service has been the Generalitat since 2010”.
After criticism from the Government -Aragonès labeled the train service “chaos”-, Raquel Sánchez has claimed that the central Executive is “investing like never before” in Rodalies. The problem, she assures her, is the “disinvestment” during the previous decade, when the Popular Party governed. For this reason, the head of Transport ensures that incidents cannot be resolved “in four days”. The breakdown in the R2, for which there will be damages for three weeks, “is a fortuitous and unpredictable accident, it is not a problem of lack of investment”, she has defended herself.
One of the hypotheses with which the Government is working on the failure of the R2 line, originating in the Gavà station, is a lightning strike on Monday, something that has not yet been confirmed, the minister specified. The Government, on the other hand, assured yesterday that this possibility did not exist because no lightning had struck, according to data from the Servei Metereològic de Catalunya. In this sense, Raquel Sánchez has lamented an “artificially generated controversy” and has asked “not to focus” on this fact because it is a hypothesis.
Sánchez has promised to explain the causes of the incident when they are determined. Meanwhile, he has assured that they are working to expand the road transport service to minimize the effects of the breakdown. The service is not expected to be normalized for another three weeks, although the minister has explained that they will try to reduce the deadlines.
On the other hand, Raquel Sánchez has questioned whether the Generalitat could avoid these incidents in the railway network if it were the owner of the infrastructure, as claimed by the ERC Government. “It has nothing to do with the management of Ferrocarrils, it is a complex network,” she clarified. The Government keeps the door closed to a complete transfer of Rodalies because “the routes of general interest of the State cannot be transferred.”
