Incidentally
. . . The Spanish high-speed trains are called AVEs. This is also the
word for birds. Which is why Google translated AVEs as BIRDS several
times. But the funniest rendition was of punto negro, or
'black spot'. For this, Google gave us 'blackhead'.
Gibraltar:
It seems that, following an apparently unproductive 10 minute chat
with David Cameron, Sr Rajoy has proposed a 4-party meeting to
discuss his bones of contention. In other words, re-institution of
the mechanism which was scrapped immediately his PP party came to
power 6 years ago. Progress? Meanwhile, a Daily Telegraph
on-line poll on who should rule the place was hijacked by voters from
here and, unsurprisingly, resulted in a massive majority in favour of
Spain. It'll be interesting to see how the local press deals with
this today. Incidentally, it's emerged that Britain's Foreign
Secretary proposed an all-party meeting last April, only to see this
rejected by Spain. You can't help wondering whether Sr Rajoy doesn't
realise his distraction ploy has rather back-fired, so
disturbing his August holiday in rural Galicia.
By
the way . . . One wonders how much substantive discussion actually
took place in a '10 minute chat' when neither Cameron nor Rajoy
speaks the other's language and has to talk through interpreters. Say
4 minutes? Enough time for each translator to read out the prepared
statements. Being old hands at media manipulation, the British got
their version of the meeting's outcome into the media before
Rajoy had even left the room. The Spanish - rather different -
version followed some considerable time later. Presumably after somebody had been summoned back from holiday to take charge of it.
The
Spanish Economy: You'll know that this isn't doing too well,
though exports are a very bright spot. And unemployment has come down
a little, thanks to (temporary) summer jobs. The IMF has suggested
that, somehow or other, everyone's salary should be reduced by 10%,
so as to make Spanish goods and services instantaneously more
competitive. In this, the IMF has been endorsed by the relevant EU
Commissioner, who's been dismissed by our trade unions as a fat rich
bastard who's got no business poking his nose into Spain's affairs.
So, the proposal's got off to a good start, then.
The
Spanish Property Market: 18 months ago, the Galician Xunta had on
its books 32,000 properties and since then has initiated sale of 46
of these. None of these went through. Which suggests something's
going wrong somewhere. Perhaps as regards the asking prices.
No
sooner do I cite an article lambasting the Brits for obsessing over
the inclusion of chorizo in all their 'Spanish' dishes than I open a
local paper to see there's going to be a competition for Tortilla
de Chorizo.
Talking
of Spanish . . . My daughter discovered yesterday that the Spanish
for 'hamster' is hámster. Pronounced khámster.
Finally
. . . My lovely neighbour Ester has several friends in town, whom I meet
from time to time. I know all their names but can never recall which
name goes with which person. I'm reminded of the line from the
classic Morecombe and Wise sketch with André Previn - All the
same notes but not necessarily in the same order. I try to cover
up by calling them all Maria.
El PAÍS ARTICLE
The
causes of the latest rail accident
It
has been said that the fault was human error and fate, but make no
mistake: the rampant construction of high-speed infrastructure has
led to the neglect of safety.
It
is expected that the Minister of Development and the chairmen of
RENFE and Railway Infrastructure Manager (ADIF) will report to
Congress today on the crash that occurred on a sharp bend near
Santiago de Compostela, many think should not have existed (although
ADIF president has declared there are no dangerous curves if taken at
the proper speed, which is to deny the existence of black spots or
suppress risk and give up), but, make no mistake, they will not say
anything other than what they have been saying informally: the fault
was human failure and fate, and explanations about safety systems
and, especially, on the control of speed, will, predictably, be
minimal, since each it seems increasingly clear that it is not that
such speed control systems malfunctioned, but that they simply did
not exist.
Although
the Administration has not made any official statement so far, we
have learned, among other things because the media have published
details, that in the last kilometres of the Orense-Santiago railway
section there did not exist any system of speed control and in the
rest of the section itself was the ERTMS, but it was not operating
in Alvia trains. In addition, we have known that, of the 3,100
kilometres of high speed officially is in Spain, apparently, only
about 1,800 have working ERTMS.
In
short, it seems that not only the Orense-Santiago in which the
accident occurred had no functioning safety system that would prevent
human error and would control the speed on a train, to meet the
schedule, was largely run at over 200 kilometres per hour, but
apparently there is not a large part of those for which the trains
run at 300 kilometres per hour and are formally considered "high
speed."
As
human failures are structural and when, by the speed of the trains, a
brief distraction (in this case, apparently caused by a two-minute
phone call on the train itself) may be sufficient to produce the
accident, with predictably tragic consequences, it seems clear it
should be a top priority on the trains whether "high speed"
or "speed high" that they are protected by speed control
systems and appropriate safety.
This
leads us to make some reflections on the structural circumstances of
our rail system that could have led to the accident and that, in our
opinion, are of two types: economic and lack of coordination.
Spain,
for purely political reasons and without any analysis of benefits
worthy of the name, has embarked on a megalomaniac and ruinous rail
project which is unparalleled, even approximately, in the rest of the
world.
We
invested in infrastructure alone AVE, about 50bn euros. Without this
serving to improve rail's very low market share in the overall
transport market(around 6% of private and 3% goods). Studies by
prestigious professors of transport reveal not only their utter
economic irrelevance but also their social irrelevance (AVE sharpens
the desertification of rural and less populated areas and helps to
concentrate population where it is already saturated).
But
neither this nor the fact that the world's most developed countries,
with a wealth and population density much higher than ours, have
decided they could not afford anything like this, prevents the
Spanish being proud of our AVEs, which have a high political value.
And while the costs have been steadily shooting up (in constant
euros, the cost per kilometre of the Madrid-Barcelona was more than
double that of Madrid-Seville and Madrid-Galicia's is four times!)
Everyone is delighted with the AVE and demands they build one to his
village.
In
this context of rampant construction and expenditure, and of the
AVE's progressively higher cost, it doesn't seem far-fetched to
suppose we bit off more than we could chew and that led to attempts
to make savings and that they may have been trying (in practice if
not from the outset) to save on what was - critical - safety.
The
rail system, in Spain and elsewhere, has traditionally been defined
as "a railway that runs on a fixed track supplemented by a
support and guidance service, constituting the whole rail-vehicle
operating unit." Well, unlike what happens in most countries of
the world, Spain decided to split said operating unit, stating that
the management of the railway infrastructure and of the provision of
services should be sharply separated, and has claimed that the ADIF
and Renfe should be private companies that theoretically compete with
each other.
Everyone
who has worked in railway companies knows that the main problem of
its most senior managers is to coordinate the different interests and
points of view that departments and operating infrastructure
inevitably have, so that, as expected, the results of the separation
are disastrous, both as regards economics and efficiency and as
regards attracting traffic.
When
the high speed Madrid-Seville line was put into operation, both the
infrastructure and train service were operated by Renfe, there was no
malfunction and the economic cost was much lower. Since the
separation,the problems and costs have soared. The opening of the
Madrid-Barcelona line suffered multiple problems and delays, for
which ADIF and Renfe blamed each other. And such problems, thereby
increasing costs, have been greater on other lines.
But
if the need for coordination between infrastructure management and
operation of train services affects all aspects of the system,
perhaps none is as important as safety, for which those responsible
for both areas tend to have different interests and different points
of view. With the current strong separation between Renfe and ADIF
there is no common superior body or person who can analyse things
from a global perspective and impose solutions to the problems.
Recent statements by the President of ADIF, on whom theoretically
depends the installation of safety systems, blaming Renfe for the
fact these were not operating in th train, regardless of whether or
not he is right and who is to blame, are objectively shocking.
It
seems difficult not to think this could be related to the conditions
that led to the Santiago crash and in any case there is an undeniable
fact: the exponential increase in recent years, according to data
from the Commission on Railway Accidents Investigation (CIAF ) of
derailments, coincides with massive spending new AVEs and the
separation between infrastructure management and train service
management.
No comments:
Post a Comment