The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, yesterday quickly directed the investigation into responsibility for the fatal accident that occurred in Urda (Toledo), which has already accumulated 69 deaths, towards the person responsible at that time in the control center that Adif has in Atocha and minimized the previous failure of the road signaling system, the TZB. He literally said that the crash of a computer system is common and that the systems are not the ones that give "wrong" orders.
But what happened around this system that failed in the first place is not something new and the sector has openly warned about it. The clearest warning was given by Fabrizio Favara, the CEO of Iryo, one of the two companies affected by yesterday's accident, less than a month ago in the Senate, when he appeared in the commission investigating the accidents in Adamuz (Córdoba) and Gelida (Barcelona) and the general situation of the Spanish railway infrastructure.
Twenty-three days before the Urda accident, on October 5, the CEO of the Italian company warned in the Senate that the disconnections of the LZB signaling system on the Madrid-Andalusia line immobilized its trains and made it difficult to resume service.
"The most frequent issue, regardless of some extraordinary event, such as a fire, is connected to the LZB signaling system," he warned.
"Every time the train signal disconnects from the ground signal, the train stops. "It cannot be moved," he explained before the commission of inquiry into the railway network. He added that recovering the connection took a long time. Favara did not describe the system as insecure: he considered it safe, "although old." But it identified the incidents associated with the LZB as the most frequent in the corridor, apart from extraordinary episodes such as fires.
His response came during the interrogation of Senator Javier Alonso Coronel, who asked him about the anomalies detected by the Iryo machinists and transferred to Adif. The manager explained that drivers must notify the traffic regulation center of any circumstance that affects traffic. He also acknowledged that the rules do not oblige Adif to later inform the operator of the measures taken to correct the incidents.
The words take on another dimension after what happened on Wednesday. Around 8:30 a.m., a fall of the LZB left a section of the line without this protection system and forced several trains to stop. Circulation management was assumed from the Adif control center in Atocha. At 8:36, one of its workers authorized the AVE driver to disconnect and reconnect the equipment and continue under the alternative signaling system at normal speed.
The Renfe convoy moved forward again, but the Iryo was still stopped further ahead, on the same road. The audios released after the accident reveal that its driver informed the control center that the train did not allow him to restart the LZB and that it continued to stop at the Urda entry signal. Minutes later the fatal impact occurred.
The coincidence between the problem described by Favara and what was reported by the driver is relevant, but it does not prove that it was an identical breakdown or that it was the ultimate cause of the crash. The investigation must determine what caused the system to crash, why the Iryo remained immobilized and, above all, how the normal operation of the AVE could be authorized when there was another train occupying the track.
The appearance raises a question prior to the accident: what knowledge Adif accumulated about the LZB disconnections, how frequently they occurred and whether this information reached those who managed incidents in real time. Minister Óscar Puente has recognized that the LZB, installed on the line since 1992, is an old technology in the process of being replaced. Iryo's notice was recorded, at least, in a public intervention before the Senate.
