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The Catalan government has taken over the operation of the commuter trains serving the city of Lleida, services which are currently under the responsibility of the state rail company Renfe and will now move to its Catalan counterpart, Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC). This was announced today by the Catalan vice-president, Jordi Puigneró, who stated his view that the current legislature should see the transfer to Catalonia, and service improvement, of all Catalan suburban trains. According to Puigneró, the government has assumed the management of the Lleida infrastructure because it is able to do so and because it can assume the magnitude of this service, which represents only 10% of all suburban trains in Catalonia.

"We are demonstrating our will to assume the entire management of suburban rail in Catalonia, because the service provided by the Spanish state and the Renfe company can be greatly improved," stated the vice president, who has repeatedly demanded that the state transfer the real control of the infrastructure to Catalan management, rather than a "cheapskate" transfer which, in his opinion, is what happened in 2009 when control of only limited aspects of the lines was passed to Catalan authorities.

 

 

However, through that agreement of 2009, the Catalan government did obtain the responsibility for deciding the operator of the rail lines, and it is based on this competence that today the cabinet decided to pass the management of the Lleida services from Renfe to the company that Catalan usually refer to as "Ferrocarrils".

Greater frequency and new trains

Puigneró explained that the first objective will be to improve the quality of the current regional service centred on Lleida. He announced that the frequency of trains on the lines to Manresa and Cervera would be doubled, from six to twelve for Manresa and from three to five serving Cervera, and that the current rolling stock would be replaced, - with the Catalan cabinet today having authorized multi-year expenditure for the purchase of four electric trains and their maintenance for a period of 15 years. Specifically, the vice president detailed that the new train units are valued at 44 million euros and maintenance at 21 million, and that the new lines will be operational in 2024, according to forecasts.

According to Puigneró, the government will have to provide funding for the investment in advance, but will demand that the Spanish state covers it in the end.

As for the workers who have operated this line until now, they will have to choose between continuing with Renfe in some other area of the company's operations or switching their employment to Ferrocarrils.

The vice president, who made the announcement at the press conference following today's cabinet meeting, has repeatedly demanded the full transfer of the suburban trains to the Catalan authorities and has asserted that the argument for not doing so given by the Spanish infrastructure minister, Raquel Sánchez, is a "bad debtor's excuse". Sánchez's assertion that the rail services "affect the whole of the state" and should therefore remain in state hands is not true, says the Catalan government minister, since most of the lines are only used by trains that begin and end in Catalonia. "If they don't want to make an effective transfer of the suburban trains, they should say so," he demanded. In any case, he rejected a partial transfer and calls for the complete handover of tracks and electrification systems.

 

In the main image, a Renfe commuter train / Carlos Baglietto