SUBURBAN TRAINS: HOW TO HAVE SUCCESS AND NOT DYING WHEN TRYING

An internal study of Renfe, recently published in the Vía Libre magazine, a dependent publication of the Foundation of Spanish Railway, shows the success of the railway transport in Spain, this time in his version of Suburban Trains.

The document stablishes in almost 700.000 the number of people that use every day the Suburban train of the Community of Madrid. The annual increase, between 4% and 5%, will increase with the creation of the AVE Madrid-Lleida (año 2002), and nothing to say about the one of Madrid-Barcelona (2004), where about 4,5 millions of clients will travell. Because of that, it is the 2004 the year announced by the document that it will probably be a great colapse, if no remedies are put before.

And that is exactly what the subdirection of Railway Planification of the Substructure Ministery is trying to do. It has adjudicated to the consultory company Ineco the construction of an investigation that could offer solutions to permit not only lighten the traffic in the station of Atocha- principal nude of the regionals of Madrid and the hangar of the AVE (to Seville and , in the future, to Barcelona)-, but also to resolve the saturation of the tunnel of 10 kilometres that goes from Atocha to Chamartín.

Paradogically, all these problems are the result of the quality and the punctuality of the services of the Suburban trains. Not long ago, the priorities of Renfe and of the Substructure Ministery were centered in offering a good public service to attract the clients. Nowadays, achieved successfully this objective, the main theme is another.

The just mentioned investigation is centered in Madrid and in the Community, but the important centers of Barcelona, Valencia or Bilbao also are increasing the number of passangers in their regional lines. Nowadays, what the Substructure Ministery and Renfe are doing is the managment of this success and, above all, the searching of formules that make not them dying when trying.