This extension of free service, occurring 101 days after the railway accident in Gelida, confirms that service managers anticipate sustained normalcy will not be achieved before this date. Although the railway chaos is no longer front-page news, incidents and delays remain a constant for users.
The situation is exacerbated by a lack of informational transparency. Adif initially attempted to silence the Dignitat a les Vies website, which monitors infrastructure status, though its president later admitted the error, and the platform is now operational again. According to it, Catalonia's railway network still has 213 points with speed restrictions, 72 of which are in the Tarragona demarcation.
“"90% of the limitations linked to the latest Rodalies crisis will disappear this month, while the remaining 10% could still be extended for a few weeks."
This figure is higher than the 156 active limitations on January 20th, the date of the fatal accident. The Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, assured that most of these restrictions would be lifted soon, but the lack of clear information regarding the recovery of lines such as the R-15 (between Reus and Riba-roja d'Ebre) and the R-4 continues to generate uncertainty. The conflict between Renfe's management in Madrid and the Semaf union keeps the normalization of the R-4 blocked.
A Renfe report from February indicates an average delay of 2.5 minutes on the Rodalies de Barcelona network, with only 4.9% of trains experiencing delays exceeding thirty minutes. However, these figures contrast with those collected by Puntual.cat, which, based on real-time information, reports an average delay of 36.88 minutes for southern Regionals lines, with the R-13 leading the ranking with 48.8 minutes of delay.
