Cantabria and Asturias join demands so that the trains arrive earlier

Santander (EFE) suburban trains, improve frequencies and travel times.

Gochicoa has informed the journalists that this has been the content of the coordination meeting for the improvement of railway communications, by videoconference, which he has held with the Minister of Rural Environment and Territorial Cohesion of Asturias, Alejandro Jesús Calvo Rodríguez.

compliance program

“Both administrations are quite on the same line in terms of claims to request that we be compensated in some way. “We want the corresponding deadlines for the arrival of the trains to be brought forward, that is, we are going to try to be demanding and have a compliance program”, explained the Cantabrian minister.

And he has pointed out that in this plan it should also be said how, when and in what way the two communities will be able to recover both the frequencies and the travel times of the suburbs.

José Luis Gochicoa explained that some of these joint demands are the increase in schedules for the lines and that delivery times be reduced as far as possible, but that it be something “realistic and not just promises”.

They also want the number of trains they will receive to be increased as long as it does not interfere with a further delay in the first deliveries, as well as free or reduced rates for users who will be affected by the delay during these years. at the arrival of commuter trains, he specified.

Even so, he acknowledges that this free “is going to be more complicated” to achieve it because there are cases in other autonomous communities. “But we think that some solution will be proposed to us, that if total gratuity does not arrive, at least it will serve to have bonuses or some type of measure that allows subsidizing or giving plans for it,” adds Gochicoa.

Joint “rigorous” document

The Asturian minister, for his part, has pointed out that the free service is a measure that is fully understood by the public, “that if there is no improvement in the service, unless it is extended” the free service as an element of social cohesion.

“It seems to us a very clear and very concrete measure that can be part of these compensations” in which Asturias and Cantabria continue to work pending the meeting next Monday, February 20, of their respective presidents, Adrián Barbón and Miguel Ángel Revilla, with Minister Raquel Sánchez.

According to Calvo, it is a “joint and rigorous technical document” on contracts, compensation, infrastructure, time mesh or frequencies that allows the Ministry to respond with the same level of precision and rigor.

For Calvo, more guarantees, more certainties and auditable commitments are needed to recover the credibility” lost with the errors made in the contracting of trains for the metric gauge network of both communities.