The error in the decisions and instructions between 8:36 and 8:48 a.m. last Wednesday departed from the Adif Traffic Regulation Center in Atocha and led to a train colliding with another that remained stopped at the Urda station. It occurred on a track in which, in just one 63-kilometer stretch, six trains were currently circulating, three in each direction. It is the half dozen that stopped as a result of the fall of the LZB signaling system but there could have been four times more, since both this system and the newer ERTMS allow up to 12 trains per hour to circulate on the High Speed tracks in each direction. Two days before the accident, the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, assured that the High Speed tracks are "underused" and in recent years Adif has encouraged Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo to put more trains on the tracks through bonuses or surcharges on the fees they must pay for using their infrastructure.
In addition to the poor maintenance of the railway infrastructure, the effect that renovation works may have on the safety of circulation and the obsolescence of computer media, the Urda accident has brought to the surface another reflection, about whether too many High Speed trains circulate on Spanish tracks. It is something that can be appreciated just by looking at the 'departure' boards of a large train station on any given day, to see that AVE, Ouigo and Iryo trains follow one another in periods of 10, 15 and 20 minutes to depart from the same origin and arrive at the same destination.
Much more tragically, the Urda accident shows how six trains circulated in a 63-kilometer stretch, three in each direction. They are the ones that stopped when the LZB system fell, which prohibits trains from running within 3 kilometers of each other - the length of the so-called cantons -, if it had not stopped working and given way to the BSL backup system that does not allow two trains to coincide within 30 kilometers. On Tuesday, some bad directions, 17 minutes and 25 kilometers on the Madrid-Seville route, were enough for an AVE train that was traveling between 160 and 200 kilometers to collide behind an Iryo stopped at the entrance to the Urda station. Inside both of them, there was still another AVE that had not yet resumed operation after the system was paralyzed.
24 trains per hour, 12 for each direction of travel
Although it may seem like a lot of trains in little space and traffic controllers have been denouncing the "overload" of work in the control centers for months, railway sources assure that these three trains were few compared to those that could circulate with the two signaling systems that are installed in the Spanish network, the LZB of Madrid-Seville and the ERTMS that works in the rest of the High Speed and that was being finished being installed on this branch of the southern corridor.
They assure that these technologies allow a train to pass through the same point on the track every 5 minutes, that is, 12 every hour and 24 if we talk about both directions of travel. In trains that can reach speeds of 300 kilometers/hour, this means that they circulate at a distance of 10 kilometers from each other, which is less than the 30 kilometers in length of the canton that is expanded in case the LZB falls - something that has happened 170 times this year, according to Puente said on Friday - and for which the circulation would be in the hands of the remote controllers and the drivers themselves, circulating with visible gear.
The Minister of Transport has frequently criticized the way in which the liberalization of High Speed has been carried out in Spain in relation to the war over ticket prices or the obligation that Renfe has to open its workshops so that its competitors, Iryo and Ouigo, can carry out heavy maintenance on their trains. This is not the case, however, when it comes to the number of trains running on the tracks. "Spain does not have a higher circulation than neighboring countries. It has an infrastructure prepared for this level of circulation and more. To say that the liberalization of the sector exceeds the capacities of the network would be a lie, because it is not true," Puente said on Monday at an informative breakfast.
Without knowing what would happen just two days later, he thus responded to whether the infrastructure was "pressured" by the increasing circulation of trains. Other sources insist that other European countries have more trains in fewer kilometers of High Speed. In Spain, the line with the most traffic is the Madrid-Barcelona, on which 90 High Speed trains circulate every day, 45 in each direction. On the Paris-Lyon line in France or on the Milan-Rome line in Italy, 200 do so. If at an informative breakfast last Monday Puente said that on the Spanish network there are points such as Torrejón de Velasco (Madrid) that register the passage of 298 trains every day, at the exit from Milan to Rome this figure reaches half a thousand.
Adif bonuses to increase traffic; surcharges for non-circulation
Nor does Adif consider that there is a problem of overexploitation of the tracks and, in one way or another, in its two regulations that determine the criteria for the fees it charges to Renfe, Iryo and Ouigo for using its infrastructure, it has encouraged as many trains operating as possible. Following the indications of the EU regulation, in its guidelines for 2024 it introduced a "bonus to encourage the growth of rail transport", with the aim of "incentivizing the efficient exploitation of the railway network and promoting new rail transport services".
In the new royalty regulation, which came into force in 2025 until 2028, Adif modified its approach also following instructions from the European Commission. Passenger transport would no longer be subsidized - freight trains would be - but, conversely, operators that do not comply with their capacity commitments would be penalized, through "surcharges" on fees for canceling trains or not complying with the number of circulations to which they committed in their framework agreements with Adif. This is the case, the Transportation environment complains about Iryo, which until recently has not fulfilled its commitment to have 23 trains circulating and only reached 20.
Furthermore, among the railway plans of the Ministry of Transport is to incorporate more trains to some High Speed corridors that are even more 'wasted' than the large ones, such as those that link Galicia and Asturias. This is one of the reasons why Renfe had planned, at least until now, to open a new purchase process for High Speed trains this year in addition to the one that has just been awarded for the Madrid-Barcelona line.
