The Spanish Union of Railway Drivers and Assistants (Semaf) has called for the adoption of "urgent" measures to prevent episodes such as the railway accident in Urda (Toledo) from being repeated. The organization proposes that trains be prohibited from being able to resume circulation at normal speed when there is more than one train in the same canton and the ERTMS or LZB systems fail.
In a note sent to the media, Semaf details that it has asked the State Railway Safety Agency (AESF), "with urgent character," to put in place actions aimed at "clarifying and modifying" the regulations that govern the LZB system and "those similar aspects that it shares" with ERTMS.
The union's specific proposal is to prevent the resumption of travel with a normal circulation regime from being authorized in scenarios in which there may be more than one train in the same Signal Blocking Canton (BSL) when the ERTMS or LZB goes down.
Semaf also stresses that it will continue collaborating on "all aspects that may arise" linked to this investigation and to others already open, with the purpose that "events of this kind do not happen again."
The LZB system (acronym of the German term 'Linienzugbeeinflussung', translated as "train control lines") is a protection device for high-speed lines that controls the train's circulation, its speed and its location with the aim of reinforcing safety.
A failure in the LZB safety system was at the origin of the collision between an AVE and an Iryo recorded this Wednesday in Urda (Toledo), in which 69 deaths have been counted so far.