Renfe attributes the majority of the delays of the Alvia that connects Vigo with Barcelona to problems in Adif's infrastructure. In a letter sent to CGT-Galiza, the operator's president, Álvaro F. Heredia, states that 73.2% of the minutes of delay attributable to infrastructure incidents is the main cause of the delays.
The explanation comes after the union reported a sustained lack of punctuality on the line. Therein lies the main contradiction of the service. Renfe admits that almost three out of every four lost minutes do not depend on its direct operation, but the train continued to leave Barcelona with an average initial delay of 30 minutes due to the lack of capacity on the Can Tunis tracks.
Barcelona moved up the departure to cut an initial delay of 30 minutes
The operator modified the departure time from the Barcelona station to correct that fundamental problem. The adjustment responded to capacity limitations at Can Tunis, which were causing an average delay of half an hour already at the start of the journey.
CGT-Galiza had maintained that on 45% of occasions delays exceeded 60 minutes. That data placed the problem beyond occasional incidents and recurrently affected a long-distance service that crosses the entire peninsula.
Álvaro F. Heredia also conveyed to the union that the continuity of the service could be called into question if the situation was not corrected. The president of Renfe warned of a possible cancellation due to the impact of compensation costs for travelers.
21-day tracking reduced average delay to 30 minutes
During the last three weeks, a follow-up carried out by CGT-Galiza and ALFERRO detected an improvement in the punctuality of the Alvia between Vigo and Barcelona. The average delay was reduced to 30 minutes.
They did not disappear, however, the incidents on the route. Among the registered episodes is a power outage caused by the presence of a person on the catenary in Vilagarcía, one of the factors that continued to alter the regularity of the service.
The monitoring by CGT-Galiza and ALFERRO reflects this improvement after the changes applied to the departure from Barcelona and places it at an average of 30 minutes over the last 21 days.