Safety under fire

The tragedy that took place near Santiago de Compostela calls for an investigation into the causes of the worst Spanish train crash in the last 40 years. The moving response by local residents, the determination of the rescue teams and the generosity of citizens who donated blood are all evidence of the great solidarity that the Spanish people are capable of. But these acknowledgments aside, authorities must be firmly pressed upon to investigate the causes of the crash with rigor and openness. We owe it to the families of the victims and to the future users of a means of transportation that is considered to be very safe.

The worst thing that could happen, following the initial period of pain and grieving, is for the accident to go down the same road as the derailment of a subway car in Valencia seven years ago: there were 43 fatalities and no responsibility. All the efforts of the Valencian government, headed by Francisco Camps at the time, focused on defending the "random occurrence" thesis and hindered the investigation into the lack of safety measures. Re-establishing confidence in the railway system is important to millions of users, as is undoing the damage to the international image of what is, after all, one of our top cutting-edge export products.

The initial hypothesis suggests excess speed was the cause of the accident. A train that has just covered 80 kilometers in a straight line on the Galician high-speed tracks, at a speed of over 200 kilometers per hour, needs to slow down to 80km/h upon reaching the first tight turn. But the Alvia train did not do that; instead, it entered the bend at 190 km/h, more than twice the speed limit for that section of track, whether because of a human mistake, a technical mistake, or a combination of both. The fact that the driver was a veteran with 30 years' experience working for Renfe does not rule out the need to investigate what kind of checks the drivers of these nearly full-fledged high-speed services go through.

There is also a need to ascertain the safety of the tracks themselves. Only part of the Ourense-A Coruña section is new; the rest of it utilizes the old tracks, and that is where the accident took place. This particular stretch lacks the European ERTMS system, which can take automatic control of the train in the event of excess speed. This infrastructure ends just a few kilometers before the site of the accident. The train drivers' union Semaf asserts that the tragedy would have been prevented if this system had worked. Adif, the railway infrastructure authority, says ERTMS is not in place in access points to stations because there is already something else there called ASFA, which is well suited to urban settings.

The pending investigation also demands that the entire railway network be checked to see whether the safety equipment in place is really operational in all sections of track or if it is missing in places. The investment in high-speed rail, which gives politicians an opportunity for nice photo ops and pleasant inaugural train journeys, cannot be made at the expense of safety measures elsewhere. The economic crisis cannot, in any way, shape or form, be a valid argument to skimp on such an essential matter.