The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (Mitma) has approved a ministerial order, published this Saturday in the Official State Gazette (BOE), to further concretize the application of the comparative method in the design and manufacture of new trains of metric width for the Asturias and Cantabria grid.

The application of this method for the new trains for these two communities had already been announced by MITMA, although it has now led to a ministerial order.

It consists of designing the section of the new trains based on the section of the trains that currently run on the network and, according to MITMA, this method “will make it possible to optimize the design and use of the cross section available in the metric gauge network “.

In a statement, the Ministry headed by Raquel Sánchez -with whom the presidents of Cantabria and Asturias, Miguel Ángel Revilla and Adrián Barbón, respectively, will meet in Madrid this Monday, February 20-, has insisted that “it No train has been manufactured, since the inconsistencies were detected in the early stages of the design of the new units” and that “no Spanish euro has been wasted”.

“The search for and approval of the optimal solution to design the largest, most modern, fastest and most efficient trains possible and adapted to the singular railway infrastructure of Cantabria and Asturias has not implied a waste of public resources”, he reiterated, as reported by the Europa Press agency.

Precisely, MITMA has defended that “this reflection is the one that has prevented a greater evil than the fact that the trains had been manufactured and that they were smaller, which would not meet the expectations of the users”.

The method is included in the European standard EN 15273 and, although its use in Spain was already compatible with the current Order FOM/1630/2015, of July 14, which approves the Railway Gauge Instruction (IFG), the Ministry has decided to explicitly include the reference to said European standard.

Thus, through the order published at the proposal of the State Agency for Railway Safety (AESF), the text of the Gauge Railway Instruction is modified to include that on lines where it is not possible to comply with the limit gauge for the implementation of obstacles GEE10/GED10, the regulation established by the UNE-EN 15273-1 and UNE EN 15273-2 standards may be used to design the construction profile of new trains, through comparison with trains that prove extensive commercial experience in the corresponding section of track.

On this point, he has indicated that the Spanish standard already includes that “the construction profile of the vehicle will be determined in such a way as to guarantee non-interference with obstacles and in no case may it determine the maximum construction profile of the GEE10 gauge calculated in accordance with the defined methodology”.

Although “it is not considered essential”, the Ministry has chosen to advance this reference explicitly to specify and detail the application of the comparative method.

He explained that the AESF had already planned to incorporate the content of the EN-15273 standard in an upcoming IFG review, when the new version of the aforementioned European standard had been published, currently in the approval process, which will detail more application of the comparative method.

He has indicated that the comparative method “has given good results” in other countries, such as the United Kingdom.

This order also serves to approve the Railway Instruction for the project and construction of the Infrastructure subsystem (IFI) and the Railway Instruction for the project and construction of the Energy subsystem (IFE).

These Railway Instructions have been developed by virtue of article 68.2 of Law 38/2015, of September 29, on the Railway Sector, which establishes that, by Ministerial Order, at the proposal of the State Railway Safety Agency, the technical conditions will be established. on projection and construction of railway infrastructures.

According to article 76 of Royal Decree 929/2020, of October 27, on railway operational safety and interoperability, Mitma may approve Railway Instructions (IF) that all subsystems and their components must comply with, in order to obtain the corresponding authorizations for entry into service.

These are technical standards of great relevance since they include those technical specifications that the fixed infrastructures of the lines and their power supply systems must comply with, together with the European standards Technical Specifications for Interoperability, to allow their commissioning and that they must maintain. throughout its useful life.

Each of these FIs is arranged in two differentiated parts: on the one hand, those requirements that are considered national standards notified within the scope of Directive 2016/797 and that cover national singularities or open points of the TSIs are included, and on the other, another, other additional instructions are included that are convenient to guarantee a good design and construction of these subsystems, without implying any type of hindrance to interoperability.

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