• Radiography of the chaos: "Spare parts are missing, they are taken from some trains to repair others"

The political dispute over the chaos in the Cercanías service of the Community of Madrid has been on the table for months due to the continuous problems experienced by users of this means of transport. And the proximity of the elections has only fueled an already recurring conflict. This Tuesday it was the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has put figures to these continued incidents, pointing to Moncloa as ultimately responsible for having the Ministry of Transport the competences.

During her visit to an affordable housing development of the Plan Vive, which the regional government has underway in Getafe, the popular leader has detailed that "the people of Madrid are suffering an average delay of 90 minutes in the hours of greatest affluence". In fact, this is one of the main complaints that can be read every morning from travelers on social networks about the scarce passage of trains, which also lead to the agglomerations growing inside the wagons.

According to data provided by the Community of Madrid, 20% of passengers, one in five, has been affected by "the chaos that is experienced daily in this public service". And the regional president has also provided the economic estimate estimated by her Government that is occurring in the coffers of the region due to "the lack of investment" of Moncloa in the service. "This represents an economic impact of 5 million euros every day that this situation is repeated, which represents 0.7% of the daily regional GDP," said Ayuso.

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I call on the Government to solve the serious problems we have in Cercanías caused by the lack of investment, "concluded the popular leader, in a message that has been repeated in recent weeks both by the president of the Community and by the opposition parties from left to right. Including the PSOE-M, with Juan Lobato at the head, whose party presides over the central government.

Also the unions of the sector have insisted on protesting for a service where incidents "are increasingly common". "We have many workshops that lack spare parts to be able to repair the trains. They remove the pieces from one to put them on another... And with a tremendous lack of personnel due to meager public job offers: only in Madrid there are about 400-500 professionals missing to do adequate maintenance, "said a spokesman for the Railway Union on March 15.

To the daily problems are also added problems of greater magnitude such as those suffered by travelers on February 16 and that affected 170,000 Madrilenians in the morning rush hour. A power outage prevented trains from circulating and affected the section between Atocha and Chamartín leaving even a group of users in the dark inside the train for an hour and a half and affecting lines C1, C2, C7, C8 and C10.

On December 12, around one of the longest bridges of the year, many of the lines suffered significant delays due to rain. And, just a year ago, on March 21, 2022, the breakdown in the signaling software at Chamartín station forced Adif to restrict as much as possible the passage of commuter trains through the enclave of lines C-1, C-2, C-3, C-4, C-7 and C-10.


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  • Isabel Diaz Ayuso
  • Getafe
  • Transport and Tourism