deadly train derailment in Spain

Now RENFE is a public company making billions by exporting technology, knowledge, experience on the railway theme. RENFE belongs to the Spanish state. Now the Spanish state is in an endebtment situation, planned methodicaly the same way all over the European north.

Such an accident destroys a great deal for RENFE, destroys it's status in general in comparison to the competition and makes things even harder for them, as they also had to make serious cuts due to the 'crisis'. With the liberalisation of the railway market in Europe on process and due to happen till 2019, RENFE seems to lose momentum.

RENFE is also a major building block of the Spanish economy, 'exporting' technology over the past years. And foremost RENFE is a a PUBLIC company. Belongs to the STATE. You know the ongoing trend of privatizing everything..

Now i'm sure the company itself will lose pace against competitors and Spain will lose one of it's key income sources while in debt.

Now judging from the way politicians act in Greece, selling out everything in the name of 'fixing the debt', meaning they are nothing more than public relations puppets sponsored by the oligarchs on a mission to fullfill their masters' agenda, same thing could be in Spain as well. They are all sell-outs. Puppets on a mission, each with a different one thus with a different profile. Isn't it strange everybody thinks politicians are stupid? Well, they might play stupid-and some of them might really be- but they are on a mission, sponsored by..

That's how competition and joint interests work i guess. Evil joint ventures.

EU railway law to halt 'stagnation, decline'
31.01.13 @ 09:29
RELATED China looking to snap up EU factories, railways European Parliament calls for more rail transport EU injects small dose of competition into its railways
BY ANDREW RETTMANAndrew email
BRUSSELS - The European Commission has proposed breaking up national railway monopolies to save passengers money and to stop industry "stagnation."

The draft law, put out on Wednesday (30 January) in Brussels by transport commissioner Siim Kallas, says state giants, such as Germany's Deutsche Bahn or Italy's Ferrovie della Stato, should be split in two, with one part responsible for infrastructure and the other part to run passenger services.

It recommends full "institutional separation" as the best model.

But it says that a softer option, in which the two parts remain under one "holding structure," but in which day-to-day business is separated by "Chinese walls," is also acceptable.

Firms which fail to do either will be locked out of providing passenger services in other EU countries when the sector opens up fully to cross-border competition in 2019.

The commission said the move will save passengers and railway firms €40 billion by 2035.

It noted that the industry, which is worth €73 billion and which employs 800,000 people in Europe, is "currently facing stagnation or decline," with operators in Belgium, Bulgaria, Portugal and Spain applying for government bailouts in recent years.

"We can take the tough decisions now ... [or] we can accept an irreversible slide down the slippery slope to a Europe where railways are a luxury toy for a few rich countries and are unaffordable for most in the face of scarce public money," Kallas said.

In other measures, the European Railway Agency (ERA), based in Valenciennes, France, is to issue EU-wide "safety passports" for railway vehicles and operators.

The commission said EU countries have 11,000 different safety rules in place and that it can take two years and cost €6 million to get permits for a new locomotive to operate abroad.

It said the ERA move will save firms €500 million by 2025.

Zooming in on the "holding structure" idea, the two parts of the new-model companies will have separate decision-making bodies, separate accounts, separate IT systems to stop leaks of commercially sensitive information from one to the other and "cooling off periods" for executives who switch sides.

The commission said national incumbents currently control over 90 percent of the passenger market in 16 out of the 25 EU countries which run trains.

In one example of how they strangle competition, Deutsche Bahn currently charges passengers up to 40 percent less for tickets than its competitors can. In another case, Austria's OBB Infrastruktur increased track access costs for a competitor, Westbahn, when it started operations on the Vienna-Salzburg line.

The UK-based International Railway Journal, an industry paper, reported on Thursday that Austria, Germany and Italy lobbied to stop Kallas from enforcing the full "institutional separation" model only.

His bill now goes to MEPs and EU countries for amendments.

But a statement by a Deutsche Bahn source to Reuters indicates the lobbying is set to go on. "[The bill is] not acceptable, because the planned remedies actually lead to a separation," the contact said.

"We think the German model, with an integrated company, is a good one, a successful one. These structures in Germany do not only allow competition, they support it," a German transport ministry spokesman noted.

SECTION Economic Affairs
TAGS Transport
RELATED China looking to snap up EU factories, railways European Parliament calls for more rail transport EU injects small dose of competition into its railways

Early on this year the discussion about the ''bad'' public companies that can charge less than the private oligarchs' companies can. Is it a sector where privatisation hasn't already occured?

Peace

It's been reported by a couple of sources that the other driver, who was in one of the carriages, used the internal telephone to make a call the driver of the train two minutes before the start of the A Gradeira curve advising him which track to take at a station called Pontedeume that is north of Santiago on the way to Ferrol. The Pontedeume station has two tracks and is fed each end by a single line that splits for the station. The line over much of this northern section is single track and Pontedeume is one of the scheduled stops for the train on that particular route.

Now, why would the other driver need to make a call the driver of the train to give him specific instructions about a station the train was due to make a stop at anyway? Something here doesn't add up.

A train driver has no control of which track he will take as the track or route is decided by the signalling department, so what was the purpose of the other driver telephoning the driver of the train to tell him something he already should have known. This needless internal telephone call obviously distracted the driver of the train because the information from the black box has revealed who the driver was talking to and that the rustling of paper could be heard on the recording a short distance from the start of the curve. Maybe the driver was looking at his paperwork for a map of the route or something. I think we will only know the answer during an inquiry that is due to take place at some time in the near future.

Considering the driver of the train had been in control of the same train sixty times (60) before he should have known every station on the route, especially which stations to make a stop at.