Rodalies Handover Raises Doubts on Who Responds to Incidents

The Transfer of Rodalies Raises Doubts About Who Responds to Incidents

The process for the Generalitat de Cataluña to manage Rodalies is underway, but a crucial problem remains unresolved: clearly determining who must respond when a train is delayed or canceled. The current law does not well define the competencies of each administration in day-to-day operations, which can disorient passengers and make solving problems more complicated 🚆.

A Management Model with Two Heads and One Body

The future Catalan public operator will take charge of directing the service, but the infrastructure, the tracks, will remain under the control of Adif, a state-owned company. This scenario forces two entities from different scopes, one regional and one state-level, to cooperate constantly. If this coordination fails, delays are likely to arise, and at that moment there is no transparent criterion on which administration assumes responsibility to the user. The lack of a unified protocol for informing and handling problems greatly concerns passenger groups.

• The operator (Generalitat) manages trains and crews, but does not own the tracks.
• The infrastructure manager (Adif, state-owned) is responsible for track maintenance and signals.
• Any technical incident requires a prior investigation to assign blame, slowing down the entire process.

Ambiguity harms the end user, who only seeks a reliable railway service and knows who to turn to when it fails.

Passenger Rights in an Administrative Limbo

European regulations require compensating passengers in cases of significant delays, but applying this rule can become an arduous task. If the cause of the problem is a failure in the track owned by Adif, should the Generalitat pay?. The procedures to claim and receive compensation can become slow and cumbersome if responsibility must first be established. This lack of clarity leaves the traveler in a vulnerable position.

• Possible extreme slowness in claims due to having to settle responsibilities.
• Confusion about the body to direct the initial complaint to (Catalan operator vs. Adif).
• Risk that administrations blame each other, leaving the user in the middle.

An Uncertain Future for Punctuality

In practice, travelers face an absurd situation: they might need to guess whether their delay is Madrid's or Barcelona's fault even before knowing if their train will arrive. This uncertainty undermines confidence in the service and shows that, beyond the transfer of competencies, it is urgent to define a clear and agile framework of responsibilities that puts the passenger at the center. The success of the transfer will not be measured only by who manages, but by how problems are responded to when things go wrong 🤔.