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A JUDGE investigating the devastating train crash just outside Santiago de Compostela last July in which 79 passengers died has slammed the rail board for ‘putting profits before lives’.

According to a court report, the Administrator of Rail Infrastructures (ADIF) decided not to put in place the European-standard ERTMS braking system which automatically slows a train down when it is exceeding the speed limit, instead using the older ASFA system which does not warn the driver when the high-speed AVE line with a limit of 200 kilometres per hour switches to the regional line, where the speed limit is 80 kilometres per hour.

The report says this decision was purely financial and went against the duty of care the rail board has towards its passengers, and questions whether it could be considered ‘suspected criminal behaviour’.

It continues by stating that the ‘only benefit obtained’ through deciding to use the old-style braking system was that of ‘saving a few minutes’ of the journey between the cities of Ourense and Santiago de Compostela, across the north-western region of Galicia, whilst at the same time considerably increasing the risk to the lives of ‘hundreds of thousands of passengers who use the line every day’.

And the actual amount of money saved by doing so was so minimal it ‘would not justify the heightened safety risk’ to train travellers.

“The decision of ADIF bosses, which departs from the general rules of rail travel, of reforming and converting an existing track into what is unquestionably a high-speed line and the putting into effect of this decision has been considered, since the very beginning of investigations [into the accident] to be a suspected criminal negligence which carried a foreseeable increase in rail traffic risk which was not socially acceptable,” the court report reads.

So far, the only formally accused party is the driver, Francisco José Garzón del Amo, who said he did not realise the high-speed line had given way to the regional track and attempted to brake at the last minute to slow down from 190 kilometres per hour to the requisite 80.

He hit a bend – the A Grandeira curve – which came just after the tracks merged whilst travelling at 190 kilometres per hour, leading to the train overturning and smashing into a brick wall in the village of Angrois, just a few kilometres before Santiago de Compostela station.

But the court says Garzón del Amo ‘cannot be the sole and exclusive’ party charged, since the track structure ‘appears to have contributed to increase the risk to passengers’.

The judge says ADIF’s use of the now-obsolete ASFA braking system rather than the ERTMS system included in the original AVE line plans was ‘influenced by a supposed commercial attraction, or attempt to attract users to the line, with entirely profit-based motives’, or by being able to offer cheaper train tickets.

Initial plans for the line included the ERTMS system right through to the end of the line in the northernmost town of Ferrol, including Santiago de Compostela station, but these were amended by ADIF bosses so that the European-standard braking mechanism finished just four kilometres before the point of the accident on July 24 last year.

This gave drivers just split seconds to realise the high-speed line had changed to the regional track – despite its not being signposted clearly – and to brake sharply before hitting the bend.

New laws covering rail safety will ensure that all speed reduction areas are signposted, among other measures to prevent incidents like the Galicia train tragedy from recurring.

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