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Comment by dinkblam

9 hours ago

Spain basically does not do the required maintenance:

https://www.reuters.com/world/spains-deadly-rail-accidents-p...

13 comments

dinkblam

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david-gpu  8 hours ago

From the linked article:

> [The] stretch of track that was renovated last May and inspected on January 7.

The track had been inspected very recently. Maybe the inspection standards are inadequate?

The linked article also shows figures that are quite meaningless without context.

> [The] vast majority [of Spain's high-speed rail budget] went to new infrastructure with only some 16% earmarked for maintenance, renewal and upgrades. That compares with between 34% to 39% spent by France, Germany and Italy,

They simply can't compare those numbers as-is. Of course Spain will be spending less in maintenance as a percentage of the total budget if it's still mainly building new tracks. It's not a useful figure.

  • imiric  6 hours ago

    > The track had been inspected very recently. Maybe the inspection standards are inadequate?

    Spanish officials are very good at deflecting blame and playing politics. Nobody wants to be held accountable for a catastrophe. Also see the 2024 floods in Valencia; a partially preventable tragedy, followed by a whole lot of mud slinging, but zero accountability.

    So while inspection standards might be inadequate, I would take anything a senior official says with a pound of salt.

    • db48x  40 minutes ago

      But he is correct. If you have a large enough budget for new construction it can make any maintenance expenditure look tiny. The right figures to compare are normalized by length and age of track, not percentages of the total budget.

  • anon7000  8 hours ago

    Yep, plus their network is pretty new anyways. Which generally needs less maintenance than older infrastructure.

Findeton  6 hours ago

Specifically the fractured track was a soldered joint that joined a track from 1989 with a new one from a few weeks ago.