Alex Trelinski
TWO people who ordered 31 new trains for the Asturias to Cantabria commuter rail line have been sacked after the rolling stock were too high to get through the tunnels.
National rail operator Renfe said its rolling stock manager had been dismissed while track infrastructure company, Adif, said its technology inspectorate head had gone.
Adif and Renfe have said they will ‘fully cooperate’ in a Transport Ministry investigation.
A Renfe statement confirmed that the ‘measurements passed to the manufacturer, CAF, were incorrect’.
Transport Minister, Raquel Sanchez, insisted the trains- costing €258 million- were still ‘in the design phase’ which will cut the extra expenditure to revamp the design.
She insisted that no rolling stock had been constructed for the order and no public money had been wasted.
Cantabria president, Miguel Angel Revilla, described events as an ‘outrageous botch-up’.
The trains were scheduled to enter service in 2024, but their launch has now been put back by two years to accommodate the redesign, fuelling anger from him and his Asturias counterpart.
“When a project is launched, one assumes the company in charge knows what it has to provide,” said Angel Revilla.
“If it is a train, you have know the wheel width and whether the train has to go through a tunnel,” he added.
