Thousands of passengers once again witnessed this weekend a new episode of the railway chaos that has devastated our country for some time. There have been almost 20 thousand travelers who yesterday and the day before yesterday have been harmed by the derailment of a Renfe train without passengers that overturned in the High Speed tunnel that connects the Atocha and Chamartín stations, leaving all connections incommunicado. from this last station with the Valencian Community and Murcia. In “the best moment for the train in the history of Spain”, as the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, defended a few weeks ago in the Senate, more than 6,000 travelers were stranded yesterday in Madrid and in the different stations in the east of the peninsula. , in which the users, little surprised by the situation, once again cried out with an increasingly contained indignation. Around 18,000 passengers were affected by the derailment throughout the weekend alone in the case of Renfe’s High Speed and Intercity services: 3,200 of them had to be transferred on Saturday by other means to the Atocha station, where they also encountered serious delays of several hours due to the presence of a person “at a point of “unauthorized access” that threatened to throw itself onto the tracks, which forced the tension to be cut, reproducing the delays for the rest of the services to and from Atocha, an infrastructure that remained open all night to accommodate all the affected trains. But The storm continued to intensify at dawn on Sunday and all operators were forced to cancel around half of the services between Chamartín and the Spanish Levant. In the case of Renfe, 22 trains were canceled yesterday and 26 were operational, which accumulated average delays of 45 minutes in the case of those that had Madrid as their origin. In total, some 13,700 passengers suffered the mishaps generated by yesterday’s programming change, according to Renfe calculations. Of them, 6,162 travelers were affected by the cancellations and another 7,538 had to change destinations to the Atocha station. Apology from the ministerThis entire situation led Renfe to publicly apologize to Renfe through its general director of business and operations, Óscar Gómez Barbero, and also to the Minister of Transport himself, Óscar Puente, who he called . “Truly serious” is the fact that “a train that is being towed to workshops breaks off as it seems it did from the train that was towing it and ends up against a tunnel wall,” Puente said about the event. Related News 22 trains suspended and 18,000 affected standard No Railway chaos “We cannot say what the situation will be like tomorrow” Antonio Ramírez Cerezo The succession of events indicated that today a day similar to yesterday’s would be reproduced again – Renfe had even canceled the sale of tickets until Friday -. But late in the afternoon, Adif announced the reopening of the tunnel that connects Atocha and Chamartín for today and, with it, the recovery of all services except for two of them between Madrid – Murcia (06:15) and Madrid – Valencia (06:30). For its part, the train that leaves Alicante today at 05:52 a.m. will end its journey at 08:14 in Atocha. But the scope of the incident will not stop there because the injured train cannot be removed until next weekend, which could force operators to interrupt some of the services on Saturday and Sunday and move operations back to Atocha. «In accordance with the planning agreed upon by Adif with Renfe and the rest of the railway operators to maximize the capacity of the railway infrastructure, from Monday to Friday, on Saturday, October 26 and Sunday, October 27, the trains between Madrid and the east of the peninsula would return on time, and only during the weekend, to start or end its journey at the Puerta de Atocha station,” Adif and Renfe explained in a joint statement. At least until then, the train will remain overturned in the tunnel. The work carried out yesterday on the ground, which forced Renfe and Adid to enable a special technical device, allowed one of the tracks to be freed, which is the one that will carry out all the operations starting tomorrow until the convoy withdraws. Once that happens, “it will be necessary to evaluate the state of the track and proceed with its repair,” they detailed in the letter. Also the competitionTo the services canceled by Renfe, those of the French company Ouigo and the Italian company Iryo were added yesterday, both operators competing with the public on the majority of High Speed lines. In the case of the low-cost subsidiary of the French state-owned SNCF, it calculated effects for 50% of the scheduled services on operational trains departing and arriving from Madrid, Valencia, Alicante, Elche, Murcia, Cuenca, Valladolid, Albacete and Segovia (there were six cancellations). The low-cost operator also made it clear to its passengers that the change in programming was due to an incident “completely unrelated” to its company. For its part, the Iryo railway suspended four trips and decided to offer its passengers the bus alternative for routes between Madrid and Alicante, or vice versa. For trips leaving or ending in Valencia, the journeys were made by train but all with departure and arrival at Atocha station. The opposition counterattacks The new railway episode provoked the immediate reaction of the main opposition party. The Popular Parliamentary Group in the Senate assured yesterday that it will “oblige” the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, to appear urgently in the corresponding commission of the Upper House “to report on the serious and continuous incidents that have occurred on the national railway network.” ». “When a minister uses one hand to cover up corruption and the other to insult on social networks, the result is that railway services do not function as they should,” said PP spokesperson in the Senate, Alicia García.
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