Renfe has replied to the Minister of Territory of the Generalitat, Juli Fernà ndez, that it has “the technical capacity and immediate resources to provide the service to Rodalies de Lleida”, but that for this an agreement between the administration holding the service and the operator is necessary public “There simply needs to be an economic agreement between Renfe and the Generalitat”, sources from the railway company said in response to the interview with the minister published this Sunday in La Vanguardia, in which Juli Fernández claims that he has offered to pay them to double the frequencies in Lleida.
The intention of the Generalitat is to reformulate the railway service of the center of Lleida, which currently only has six daily circulations between Lleida and Cervera and less than 1,000 daily passengers. The change is associated with a change of hands more political than technical, with four new trains operated by Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (FGC). The intention was to apply the changes from 2024 but the supply crisis has already delayed the arrival of the convoys to 2025, at the earliest.
Renfe has added that, as a public company, it must “rigorously comply with the framework of the General Intervention of the State Administration”. That is, there must be a program contract in which the services provided and the associated cost are clearly defined if the current R12 is to be improved, which starts from l’Hospitalet and reaches Lleida after crossing Barcelona, ​​El Vallès and Manresa.
From Renfe they add that “in the absence of closing of 2022, the Generalitat owes 156.6 million euros to Renfe for the Rodalies services” and that “a program contract is already needed to solve this problem”, an agreement that until a few years ago months was set as an essential condition to buy the new Rodalies trains but that the Government finally disassociated.
