Oscar Puente: “Conventional train investment is the highest in the history of Spain”

The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, says that government investment in conventional train lines is “the highest in history”, the great commitment to high speed “already part of the past.” According to the minister, “we come from a very bad period in terms of investments”, which corresponds to the years between 2011 and 2018, “where, just to mention an example, in Extremadura, in 2017 only 7 million were tendered for the entire network” of Railroad. In 2024, however, the Executive invested 4,500 million, 2,500 in high speed and the remaining 2,000 by conventional train, the highest investment in history. ”

Minister Puente has intervened in the V edition of the “European Funds” forum of Eldiario.es and has explained that this greater investment effort is one of the reasons of the greatest number of incidents both near and in Rodalies. After its speech, the sustainable and interconnected mobility table has also been held: the transport of the future, to continue discussing how mobility will be in a few years.

According to Puente, before the end of the new convoys of Stadler and Alstom that must replace several dozens of the current ones. “That does not mean that there are no incidents, since they increase when trains are new and at the end of their life period, while they are reduced in the Valley stages. But it cannot be said that we are not working or investing,” he summarized.

Regarding Rodalies to Catalunya, the minister has assured that he is “advancing reasonably” according to the “roadmap we negotiated with ERC.” As for the fact that Renfe “preserves a slight majority” in the joint society, the holder of Transportation justified it in the “labor importance, because it guarantees that the workers will be able to have mobility, which is good both Renfe as a whole and for Catalonia.”

Óscar Puente has also pointed out that the works in the infrastructure that were damaged by the Dana de Valencia advance at a good pace, both the roads-like the construction of a new viaduct in the A-7-, as the railroads (high speed and vicinity), and reiterated the possibility of sanctions and that the Community of Madrid “gets to lose the funds” to finance the discounts to the transport. Discounts are financed with state funds.