In the last two weeks, the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has been in charge of the recovery work on the infrastructure destroyed by DANA. Days marked by a change in profile, in which he has not entered the political fray, but has been focused on the need to face, as soon as possible, the enormous work on roads and trains, with the Cercanías service in the province of Valencia seriously hit.
Precisely, the return to the circulation of High Speed trains between Valencia and Madrid has prevented Puente from being present at the IV Sustainable Mobility Conference, organized by elDiario.es. Hours earlier, he gave this interview with Ignacio Escolar, in which he assesses how the recovery work is developing and how Spain is facing the modernization of infrastructure that has to be resilient to the impact of climate change.
Regarding the management of DANA, Puente defends the distribution of powers. “It is essential to understand how the Spanish State is configured to be aware that ‘manu militari’ operations, in which one administration imposes itself on another, do not and cannot work,” he argues. Also, that management corresponded to the autonomous administration. “What is reasonable is that the leadership of a recovery, of a catastrophe like this, is assumed by whoever has the competencies and who has the greatest knowledge and the greatest proximity to the territory.” In parallel, “what the central Administration has to do is make all the resources available to whoever must exercise that leadership. And I think that has been done and done well.”
During these two weeks, Puente has not sought a political clash, nor to enter “into the evaluations, into the assignment of responsibilities” or “into the punching of the table.” “I think that is not operational, nor is it typical of a modern decentralized State like ours. I think collaboration is better,” he says.
The priority has been the recovery of the railway system and the road network. What has been recovered before has been the High Speed, but not because it was considered more important than the Cercanías, but because it was less damaged. “There are people who say why you prioritize High Speed,” Puente assumes. “Nothing is prioritized. It is a question of dimension, of magnitude of the damage. The High Speed had 1.2 kilometers damaged in the Chiva tunnel and 2.9 kilometers of the Torrent tunnel, which was flooded and full of mud. That is, the task was to clean the Torrent tunnel completely, which has not been easy. We have replaced 1.2 kilometers of track in the Chiva tunnel, which is not small. It has been two weeks working morning, afternoon and night in three shifts. But it has nothing to do with the magnitude of Cercanías. We are talking about more than 90 kilometers of destroyed network,” he summarizes.
Fully recovering the Cercanías network will take longer. Lines C1 and C2 are expected to be operational, without having to resort to substitute buses, on December 22. On the other hand, “C3 is very destroyed,” the minister assumes. “There are 90 kilometers of route and more than half have disappeared. There we settled, which is no small thing, with connecting Valencia with Aldaia also on December 22. Although it is not a lot of distance, it is a lot of population. We are talking about more than 100,000 people who can benefit from having the Cercanías rehabilitated.”
In the road network, those of the State have been rehabilitated in these two weeks, with some provisional solution and it is not yet possible to calculate the economic impact of DANA on all infrastructures. “It will take months. The communication network to and from Valencia and everything that allows you to surround Valencia, the ring roads, large roads, high-capacity, high-speed roads. All of this has been practically restored now, in its entirety. The problem is going to be internal mobility,” he points out.
Despite all the work, “Valencia, right now, is a Gruyer cheese, and the regional, provincial or local roads have a very high level of destruction and no action is yet being taken,” he points out. So, that’s going to take a long time. “I want to reiterate the Ministry of Transportation’s willingness to cooperate in whatever is necessary on roads that are not our responsibility. We have made ourselves available to the Government of Valencia, the Provincial Council and the city councils so that, if they tell us ‘you take charge of these roads’, we will immediately proceed to do so,” Puente emphasizes.
A request for participation for which the State is prepared. “At this moment, I have nine teams that were dedicated to ordinary works” that can “start now if necessary, tomorrow, but I need that order. I need you to tell me this work, this other one, this other one. Take charge as a Ministry and fix them yourself.”
Profile change
Puente has changed his communication profile, from entering the debate to only talking about management because “it was necessary.” “I have mainly been in charge of communicating the things that my Ministry is doing, but I have also punctually come out against some hoaxes, such as the one about the Bonaire parking lot, such as the number of deaths, the number of missing people. It seemed terrible to me that this was being established in public opinion without any real basis, factual or evidentiary. That, honestly, has seemed very worrying to me and at some point I have gotten into territory that was not mine, but fundamentally I have dedicated myself to transportation,” he summarizes. “At this moment I believe that nothing else is appropriate other than informing and working. And I believe that citizens would not understand either, nor do I think they would like it at all, how some continue in this crisis more dedicated to attacking, justifying themselves, blaming others than working.”
However, it clearly defends the role of the State and the importance of taxes to be able to act in any crisis. “When the State is questioned, when the usefulness of taxes is questioned, I believe that the best way to combat this is to put on the table the immense work that the State does and the enormous value of the taxes that one pays,” argues the head of Transport. “Taxes are not for paychecks, taxes are to strengthen public services,” he emphasizes. “And that is why it is so important to communicate to citizens what is being done.”
And there will be time to take stock. “This misfortune, unfortunately, is not here for a few days or a few weeks. We’ll see for how many months. Therefore, there will undoubtedly be time to look back, take stock of what each one did, what each one contributed and attribute and demand responsibilities.”
Rethink infrastructure
The DANA from 15 days ago and this week highlight the importance of investment in infrastructure, not only in trains, but also in roads and airports. Regarding the latter, the expansion of El Prat, in Barcelona, on land that could be flooded, is in focus. Puente does not believe that “that is the biggest problem.” “The expansion of El Prat airport is a good opportunity to make a good overall environmental approach that improves the situation of the airport,” he says.
In recent days, there has also been a landslide on the AP-66 highway, which connects Asturias with León and where Puente does not see a lack of maintenance or investment. “In the case of AP-66 we are talking about a collapse of a wall that was propped up, that was reinforced. We are talking about an extremely complex terrain and in which these types of events occur with certain frequency,” he assumes.
“I would not extrapolate that case to the conservation of the road network as a whole,” he argues. “We are allocating almost 1.4 billion euros to road maintenance each year and we are, therefore, close to the figure that would be considered the essential minimum for adequate conservation, which is around 1.5 billion euros. The ideal would be to raise that figure to 2,000 million,” he acknowledges. “What’s more, as a consequence of climate change and the extreme weather events that are going to occur every year, we are going to have to do it whether we want to or not, because there are going to be extraordinary costs that are going to become ordinary” .
Problems on the railway network
In recent months, problems and incidents on the railway network have also multiplied. One of the latest, the derailment of a train in the tunnel that connects the Madrid stations of Chamartín and Atocha, which has left a track unusable. “We know what happened. We don’t know very well why,” admits the minister. “It was a train that was towed from one workshop to another by an identical model that it carried, which was in double composition with an anchoring system” that is “practically impregnable.” “At a certain moment it seems that one of the two trains, the one that was towing, loses traction,” explains Puente. “He decides to do a maneuver that is going to clarify what is happening, first of all, to isolate the brakes of the train that was being towed.” And, secondly, “releasing the train with the result that the train slid down the slope and ended up against a wall.” A train that, finally, will be removed piecemeal.
Puente takes on the problems of recent months that coincide with the renovation of stations such as Chamartín or Sants, in Barcelona. Works that coincide by “need and availability of resources.” “In the last five years, Spain has incorporated 750 kilometers of high-speed network of high-speed roads, more than all the countries of the European Union together have if we except France, Germany and Italy.” A growth of the network that has exceeded the expectations of several infrastructures, such as the aforementioned Chamartín.
“Last year we already made a record investment in conventional trains, 1.4 billion. This year we are going to reach 2,000 million,” says Puente. “Adif is breaking all construction bidding records. Almost 4,000 million. There is no country in Europe that makes a similar investment. Only China is investing that kind of amount,” he adds. “Spain has an outstanding railway system” although it has problems. “Yes, undoubtedly, but not because of laziness, on the contrary,” concludes the head of Transport.
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