The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has indicated that the Executive is studying interrupting the circulation of high-speed trains between Madrid and Barcelona completely while the remodeling works already planned last year are carried out.
According to what Puente has detailed, this model is already applied in other European countries such as Germany, where it is common to temporarily suspend rail service during infrastructure renovation works. In this way, the works are completed in less time, although passengers stop having the service during that period.
In the case of Spain, up to now the usual practice has been to make the works compatible with the commercial operation of the line, concentrating the work in time slots without traffic or resorting to partial and occasional interruptions. The objective of this system is to maintain users' mobility, even at the cost of significantly lengthening the execution deadlines.
The head of Transport has underlined that the possible temporary closure of the line would not be linked to safety problems, but to improving punctuality. In recent years, this aspect has been affected by the increase in investments destined for the railway network, compared with the previous stage of worse economic situation.
"We would be talking about a work that can take us five years in maintenance mode, we could reduce it to less than 24 months or 12 months under normal conditions, but during that time we would deprive users of the service. It is something we have to assess," he has said at the press conference he is giving after the accident in Urda (Toledo).