The suffering of passengers on the Vilanova line has been felt at every station since Tuesday. With three trains in each direction at rush hour, the R2 offers a clearly diminished service in which the waits become eternal and the uncertainty of knowing when the next train will pass increases the sense of chaos. All the people who are late to work in the morning and to their child’s bath in the afternoon do not care much if the cause of the incident was lightning or something else, but the representatives of the Generalitat and the Ministry of Transport have embarked in the middle of the election pre-campaign in a quarrel over the origin of the breakdown that brings few solutions to the users.
According to the Railway Infrastructure Administrator (Adif) the origin of the incident is a lightning that broke the catenary with the bad luck that hit a signal and all this triggered a fire that completely destroyed the enclave This is an essential element in rail traffic that was affected, according to Adif’s deputy director of operations, Alfonso Ruiz, “by an absolutely untimely and impossible to predict incident”.
This hypothesis is not shared by those responsible for the Department of Territory, who are based on reports from the Meteorological Service of Catalonia based on data from the atmospheric electrical discharge detection network to rule out that there was any storm on the coast of Baix Llobregat monday night In this way, the Generalitat lends credibility to Adif’s line of inquiry defended directly by the Secretary General of Infrastructure of the Ministry of Transport, Xavier Flores, a few hours after the incident.
The Generalitat (as owner of the service), Renfe (as operator) and Adif (as responsible for the infrastructure) held a meeting yesterday afternoon and each of the representatives insisted on their positions. To try to get out of this deadlock situation, the Generalitat has decided to commission an audit to complement Adif’s investigation. The intention of the Secretary of Mobility, Marc Sanglas, is to “draw his own conclusions” in order to be able to take the appropriate decisions later on the responsibility for the protection of the infrastructure.
Before the meeting, the issue was the subject of debate in Parliament and has become a central axis of the pre-election campaign. Republican Oriol Junqueras boarded a train and stopped in Vilanova, Sitges and Castelldefels accompanied by the mayors of these cities. Xavier Trias, for his part, reported the situation from the France station.
Apart from all this, the repair work has already begun for the breakdown that destroyed the entire signaling system of the Gavà enclave, and is expected to last at least three weeks. Meanwhile, the trains between El Prat de Llobregat and Castelldefels are running in the old fashioned way, with the telephone blocking system, with a much more limited capacity than usual.
This has forced a reduction in the number of trains in service and throughout this week they will continue to operate irregularly, with two Commuter trains per hour from Sant Vicenç de Calders and a regional train that makes all the stops as if it were a Commuter. From Saturday, it is intended to regularize with pre-set timetables until the burnt-out enclave is rebuilt, with longer journey times than usual, but which can at least be met with some reliability.
At the same time, the alternative road service has been strengthened. From today there will be shuttle buses every half hour from Castelldefels to Barcelona from six to nine in the morning and in the opposite direction from five to seven in the afternoon. “In this way, the line will be unloaded a little”, confides the director of Rodalies, Mayte Castillo.
From Monday, the bus service from Gavà will also be offered during the same hours. The Generalitat considers this insufficient and believes that an alternative should be offered by road from all the affected stations of the R2 Sud, at least during rush hour.
