Spanish rail's costly blunder: New trains too large for tunnels

Renfe provided incorrect information to the manufacturer of new regional trains for the Spanish regions of Cantabria and Asturias. The costly error has resulted in dismissals at the highest level of the nationalized company.

The intentions of Spanish public railway operator, Renfe, were good: to renovate the 40-year-old railway fleet, increasingly subject to damage, in the regions of Cantabria and Asturias in the country's north. But the miscalculation that crept into the order details could cost Renfe dearly. The specified dimensions of the trains were too large.

So much larger in fact that if Basque railway manufacturer CAF had simply followed the instructions provided by Renfe in 2020, when it won the tender, the 31 trains it would have delivered would not have been able to fit through the tunnels. While the manufacturer came to the realization relatively early during the design stage, the delivery will still be delayed by two to three years and the project, initially estimated at €258 million, will suffer a massive yet-to-be-determined cost blowout.

"I hope that heads will roll!" said the president of the Cantabria regional government, Miguel Angel Revilla, on Thursday, February 2, without hiding his anger against what he called "monumental pig work." Spanish Minister of Transport Raquel Sanchez apologized and took the matter seriously, announcing on Saturday, February 4, the dismissals of the former head of material management at Renfe, who was in charge when the new trains were awarded, and the head of inspection and track technology at the rail network manager, ADIF. For now.

Submarines too heavy

In addition, internal audits have been requested at ADIF and at Renfe to examine the flaws that led to the blunder. On Wednesday, February 8, a working group of stakeholders in the case met to accelerate the rectification process. The 31 regional trains were originally scheduled to be delivered by 2024. Now the ministry hopes to have a new timeline for their delivery by this summer, at best.

In order to move as quickly as possible, Renfe will make one of its old trains available to CAF, so that the company has a physical reference. The purchase order is complex. When applying the current safety standards to the old network of narrow tracks, the width of the trains must be significantly reduced to maintain the minimum required clearance from the tunnel walls. This also means that the trains' carrying capacity is much lower than on modern infrastructure, which means suboptimal passenger service.

The miscalculation of the dimensions of these regional trains has caused a lot of controversy and mockery on social media. It is reminiscent of the construction of four S-80 submarines by the nationalized Spanish company Navantia that began in 2005. Although delivery had initially been scheduled for 2012 at a cost of €1.8 billion, the ultramodern vessels have swallowed up nearly €4 billion in public funds and are still yet to be delivered.

In the meantime, in 2013, the builder realized that the submarines weighed too much for their buoyancy to be guaranteed, and decided to lengthen them by nearly 10 meters. As a result of the modification, the vessels no longer fit in the submarine base in the port of Cartagena in the country's south, which needed to be enlarged. Their delivery is expected for 2023, more than 10 years behind schedule.

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