Commuter and medium distance: a machine for creating inequality

For several months, Madrid commuter trains have been accumulating delays and incidents in crescendo. There is now a bottleneck that is very difficult to manage for ADIF and Renfe. On the one hand, there is the need to replace a large part of the train fleets (old and with frequent breakdowns), and, on the other, the chronic disinvestment that has historically led us to spend money on very expensive high-speed infrastructure and not on medium distance and metropolitan trains. This lack of investment means that it is now necessary to undertake too many reforms at the same time.

In Madrid, it is its elites who benefit the most from the AVE. After all, the flow of business increases from the coast to the capital and the holiday areas are also reached sooner.. On the other hand, the rentiers of Oviedo and Gijón, like those of Valencia, Seville or Malaga, also benefit from the weddings, bachelor parties and getaways of many Madrid residents when the good weather begins.. It is a win-win for the wealthy classes on the coast and on the plateau that the governments of the right and left have targeted for decades.. The problem is that there are many workers who do not have 500 or 1,000 euros to go on a long weekend, but who must take the suburban train in the capital every day.. The point is that a good part of them do not live in the 15-minute city, nor do they travel by Uber, nor can they properly balance their personal and work lives.. On the contrary, they must put up with few frequencies at peak times, overcrowded trains, long waits and lately an endless number of breakdowns and delays that they then have to justify in their jobs..

Normally, a journey between Atocha and the Ramón y Cajal Hospital (four stations) should last between 15 and 20 minutes, but to those who read this in a car stopped ad aeternum at some point along the way and without public address information, it will seem like a macabre joke. , because they know from experience that it will take at least an hour.

And mobility is essential to guarantee social cohesion in metropolitan areas. Without good communications and transportation, imbalances between the center and the periphery of cities, and the system in general, increase.. Housing and coffee prices, but also mental and environmental health (through traffic jams), have a direct correlation with mobility.

The fact is that in Madrid there is an abysmal difference between the quality of service of the metro – managed by the Community of Madrid -, its coverage and frequencies, and those of a Cercanías network – managed by the Ministry of Transport – which is not has adapted to the growth of the metropolitan area. To put the magnitude of the problem in context, the following comparison is enough: with almost six million inhabitants (one less than Madrid), the metropolitan area of Barcelona has 228 stations and a network of 615 kilometers and 108 million users per year.. On the other hand, the Madrid network, with 160 million annual users, has only 90 stations spread throughout a 370-kilometer network.. If these numbers were the other way around, more than one in Barcelona would say that it is cruel punishment.

We have, therefore, a systemic problem that cannot be fixed by improving signaling, or by increasing the number of trains, or by building a few more stations.. We are talking about how, to be a serious and fair network with its citizens, the Madrid Cercanías should be twice the size.

Yes, in the future there will be fewer breakdowns because obsolete trains are beginning to be replaced, and there are also another 211 under construction and works to improve platforms, catenaries and tracks are being carried out.. But they should have ended a long time ago.. Now, the works must be done quickly and that is why there are failures, and that is why the trains derail and then the entire network, already saturated, collapses..

How can we complain about car dependency if there are no quick alternatives? Madrid has three highway rings (necessary), but not a single suburban ring. The circular lines cross through the Recoletos tunnel, in the heart of the city, and, therefore, do not provide efficient coverage to the medium and low income peripheries in the south-east.. Except for a few trains a day, the entire flow of travelers from the Henares corridor enters Madrid through Atocha, instead of also through Chamartín, in the north.. But in the south, Móstoles, Fuenlabrada, Parla or Valdemoro, cities that have hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, are not connected to each other, because the network is not designed to unite the region, but to transport the alienated workers from their dormitory cities to their work centers through a single access point, again Atocha. And that's why, when a train derails in that place… Chaos breaks out.

The middle distance and empty Spain

In Madrid there is a huge bottleneck between the Atocha and Chamartín stations. Both are being remodeled and adapted to a growing high-speed demand and these works are causing problems in the tunnels and platforms that they share with the Cercanías trains.. But there is a serious problem of territorial cohesion when cities like Ávila, just 100 kilometers from Madrid, have only a few daily frequencies and the journeys are slow and take more than two hours..

The global city can empty the center of Spain, but it could fill it and generate a profitable symbiosis with the provincial capitals and party heads at a distance of up to 250 kilometers if there were good connections with shuttle trains, as is the case between Barcelona and the cities of the interior or as happens with Toledo or Segovia. Cities that orbit the capital and that are already part of its network of influence. Others like Talavera, Ávila, Sigüenza or Zamora cannot take advantage of the Madrid momentum. It is not so worth it to live there but work in Madrid, and weekend tourism arrives in cars in trickles, but not in trains with hundreds of travelers.. And that eliminates opportunities, increases the price of housing in Madrid and makes it difficult to open companies in these places to take advantage of the inertia of the big city.. Too far for the good and too close for the bad. And of the bad, perhaps the worst are the young people who leave and do not return. If it is not worth it to live in Ávila and study in Madrid, those who go to the capital also encourage a perverse transfer of income in the form of rentals from increasingly depressed territories to those that concentrate economic and human capital..

The State joins the criticism of Madrid's macrocephaly, mobilizes paintings from the Prado Museum and officials to other cities to correct the effect of capital status, but does not mobilize trains. The low frequencies, obsolete convoys, breakdowns and endless journeys do not help to establish population and resources in the interior regions.. Disinvestment in medium distance is strengthening the vacuum cleaner effect of Madrid instead of making many places participate in the wealth it generates. And in the end, many provinces are gradually becoming human farms designed to fuel the economy of those who go to the beach at 300 kilometers per hour..

But the problems with suburban and medium distance transportation are becoming chronic throughout the country; they are not an exclusively Madrid problem.. Malaga, for example, has a metropolitan network far below its needs, something that is limiting its development and increasing prices in its center.. At the other extreme, for a few days now Asturians can celebrate that, 4,000 million euros later, their connections with Chamartín have been reduced by one hour thanks to the immense work of viaducts and tunnels on the Pajares bypass. But the new FEVE regional trains will have to wait another three years because they do not safely enter the old tunnels that connect the region..

In short, it is good news that next summer we will be able to go to the Asturian and eastern beaches in a short time, but the State has a pending issue regarding medium distances and Cercanías, which are those that socially unite the population and generate equal opportunities. The connection of Madrid with the coast is great, but not the one that would allow the population to settle in the neighboring provinces, much less the one that hundreds of thousands of people suffer every day in its metropolitan area.. Mobility in and between cities is a fundamental tool to generate equality or generate imbalances. Unfortunately, after five years, the “most progressive government in our democracy” boasts of promoting territorial cohesion and equal opportunities, but maintains an infrastructure policy that continues to enrich the rich at the expense of the poor..