[jonp888]

For many years the Spanish state-owned company RENFE had a monopoly on Spain's huge high speed rail network. However their high prices, inconvenient schedules and poor customer service were often criticized, and so when, to the annoyance of RENFE and many spanish politicians, additional foreign operators entered the market on the key Madrid - Barcelona route, ridership doubled whilst ticket prices halved.

So I would standby for this tragedy to be used for political purposes to try and get foreign operators banned from Spanish tracks, regardless of the facts of the matter.

[diegocg]

Foreign operators are mandated by the EU, they can't be banned. Spain has been one of the first countries to allow foreign high speed operators (unlike other European countries that did attempt to delay their entrance as much as possible

[oersted]

I have observed that it is a recurring pattern. I am most aware of the behind the scenes in public education, but I believe it is across the board.

Massive efforts are done to implement reforms to conform to EU standards, believing that that’s how the “superior” EU members do it (Germany, NL, Nordics…). But then I go there and I see that their system has nothing to do with the standards and they are not doing much to conform.

It’s fine, these reforms are often beneficial for Spain, and I do believe that generally being in the EU is a big win-win. Although sometimes it’s just a lot of unnecessary reshuffling at great cost.

A certain segment of the Spanish population really looks up to northern EU countries, or rather they feel a sense of inferiority. In practice there is not all that much to look up to and I believe Spain should be feel more confident. Many great things are prevented by the widespread belief that we are in a shitty country and that everyone is useless, but it is just not true.

[jeroenhd]

> Massive efforts are done to implement reforms to conform to EU standards, believing that that’s how the “superior” EU members do it (Germany, NL, Nordics…).

I can't speak for Germany or the Nordics, but here in the Netherlands the government is doing just about anything in their power to keep foreign competition from our rail network. The only lines serviced by foreign operators are the ones that would cost the national operator more than they would bring in and (some of) the international train services.

Our "high speed" rail is a joke. The trains themselves are fine, but the bridges over them are too brittle for the train to actually achieve high speeds, so it's operating at less than half the speed Spanish high speed rail is operating at. If anything, the success of the Spanish rail operators is an argument in favour of actually bringing competition to Dutch rail operators.

That said, the Dutch railway network is very different from the Spanish railway network. We're a small, densely populated country with many stops along just about any track, barely giving most trains time to accelerate even between larger city centers. The network is complex, the rails are extremely busy all hours of the day, our trains run on an idiotically low voltage and two trains with a dozen minutes in delays can back up the national train grid in no time if they slow down in the wrong spot. There are only a few long-distance high-speed rail options that make sense, some of which already sort of exist (Eurostar to the south), some of which our neighbours plainly don't want (any Dutch rail project crossing into the German border), and some of which are hardly financially viable (trains from the big cities to remote parts of the country) in a country that doesn't want to spend money on public transport.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

> any Dutch rail project crossing into the German border

Like this?

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/51.901456/6.137620

https://www.bing.com/maps?cp=51.901346%7E6.137722&lvl=19.8&s...

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9016843,6.1374348,210m/data=...

[ReptileMan]

>Our "high speed" rail is a joke

Do you need high speed rail at all? There are not many points in the country that are more than 1 hour away with regular speed trains.

[yurishimo]

It would be nice to have a couple of routes between a few major cities with nonstop service, but there are are no bypasses around the interstitial cities so those would need to be built first.

Groningen -> Amsterdam

Maastricht -> Amsterdam

Eindhoven -> Amsterdam

Nijmegen -> Amsterdam

I can only speak for myself, but a trip from Maastricht to Amsterdam is almost 2.5 hours by train for a distance of a smidge over 200km. This is mainly due to all of the stops along the way to pick up riders in every major city between the two.

Currently, our trains never go faster than 160km/h if the onboard screens are to be trusted.

[jeroenhd]

There are a few tracks that can go faster than 160km/h (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Baanvaks...) but also slower ones. The 80km/h tracks especially have a tendency to make a relatively short journey feel like it takes forever, especially if your train journey includes a trip over the 200km/h segment.

[jeroenhd]

Taking a train to the nearest (usable) airport within the Netherlands takes between 2 and 2.5 hours depending on the available trains, amount of transfers, and "high-speed" (not actually) rail surcharge. Actually, because of a train hitting someone, I currently can't reach any airport by train because my city is right at the edge of the train network. Groningen-Schiphol is similar, and Maastricht-Schiphol is 2,5 hours at the very minimum. Meanwhile, Amsterdam-Brussels takes about 2 hours.

Our regular train speeds are 80kmh to 140kmh, with maybe a little bit of 160kmh on specific stretches.

I realize my country is incredibly well-connected by public transit and those 2 hours are already a massive luxury compared to probably most of the world's population, but I wouldn't mind a few high-speed lines from the center of the country (probably Utrecht) to major cities. With trains currently being more expensive than taking a car if you travel with two people or more, it'd make the high cost worth it.

[ReptileMan]

and your country is 320 kilometers high and 250 wide. There may be a lot of problems with your rail network but insufficient train speed ain't one of them. With the current rail speeds you can cross it comfortably in two hours in any direction. Probably you need to optimize it, lay new train tracks, but there is no need to go for the expensive high speed.

[tremon]

The station density in NL simply doesn't allow for the same kind of high-speed rail that you see in Spain, France or Germany. The segments Groningen-Zwolle and Maastricht-Eindhoven are basically the only parts where train speeds over 200km/h make any difference. On all other trajectories, the limiting factor is not the maximum train speed but the interference from other rail traffic.

The major cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag) typically have 4 trains/hour going between them. Higher-speed trains won't make any difference there, unless you first build out dedicated infrastructure (like the IC Direct line between Schiphol and Rotterdam, which cuts a whopping 20 mins from the regular IC travel time).

[wongarsu]

It's a common pattern far beyond the EU. One big driving force is that if you have an existing solution that achieves 80% you have much less incentive to change than if your current state only achieves 50%. So the "inferior" country modernizes to the new 100% solution while the "superior" one might stay on the 80% solution for far longer

[pestatije]

exactly...39 dead and we should feel more confident, that's how shitty we are

[wongarsu]

Compared to road deaths that's practically nothing. Obviously 39 dead are 39 too many, and in terms of railway disasters it's a lot, but in the bigger picture it's a blip

[tpm]

Tragedies like this do happen elsewhere. It's just important to make sure they don't happen twice for the same reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster

[arielcostas]

France, for example, has been trying to delay allowing Renfe (Spanish operator) to operate through the country as much as possible, while their public operator SNCF (branded as Ouigo) has been able to operate here since 2021.

[michieldotv]

This EU free-rider behavior is unfortunately typical of French public sector policy.

European energy markets were famously liberalised in 1996, allowing French state-owned EDF to acquire the previously state-owned monopolist Electrabel in Belgium. All the while France negotiated an exemption for not privatising EDF because of its nuclear facilities. EU regulations should prevent this type of free-ridership: state-owned companies shouldn't be able to compete abroad if they don't face competition at home.

[nyreed]

Interestingly SNCF is expected to subsidise less profitable local services with funds from the profitable high speed routes.

Open competition kind of spoils this model. It's not really sustainable.

[arielcostas]

It's not. Regulation (EC) No 1370/2007[^1] states in the annex, related to compensation in cases where a public operator operates subsidised public services and commercial, for-profit activities, that:

>In order to increase transparency and avoid cross-subsidies, where a public service operator not only operates compensated services subject to public transport service obligations, but also engages in other activities, the accounts of the said public services must be separated so as to meet at least the following conditions: [...]

Another topic is: should France be allowed to keep the TGV monopoly in their country because they need it to finance the rest of their network, while they are allowed to operate abroad (like in Spain), taking away business from Renfe through the free market competition they try to impede on their country anyway?

[^1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...

[elnatro]

Unless there is evidence that the accident was caused by the Iryo train, I wouldn’t be so fast to blame the private companies on a decaying infrastructure.

There are plenty of cases of lack of maintenance in the railway network.

[Xenoamorphous]

> Unless there is evidence that the accident was caused by the Iryo train

I'd say the same about the railway network. We don't know what happened yet.

[elnatro]

The railway network has been mismanaged and plagued with incidents for years. See it for yourself: ADIF was aware that there were issues in Adamuz for months[1].

[1]: https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20260119/adif-notifico-...

[Xenoamorphous]

That doesn't mean we know for sure it was that, don't you think? Your comments seem very politically motivated, and you're asking others to not blame it on the train as the reasons for the accident are still unknown and at the same time you're pushing the maintenance issues narrative.

[elnatro]

I am nos asking anything. You can think what you want. What the data that we have right now tells us is: new train built in 2022, checked 4 days ago[1], and issues on that part of the railway track for months[2].

[1]: https://elpais.com/espana/2026-01-19/el-fabricante-hitachi-r...

[2]: https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20260119/adif-notifico-...

[Xenoamorphous]

Were you so quick to blame the government in the Alvia accident in Santiago? Just wait for the investigation.

[wolvoleo]

But like the OP says this particular infrastructure area was brand new.

[TacticalCoder]

But brand new doesn't mean the repairs / mainenance were done correctly. It could both be brand "new" and defective.

We've seen lots of serious fuck ups in Europe lately: including for a start several cases of maintenance improperly done on big passenger planes that nearly led to hundreds of passengers deaths (several planes have been diverted in the last months and the cause was improper maintenance).

I'm not saying improper repairs/maintenance on the rails are the cause: I'm saying it's a fact we've seen improper repairs/maintenance on passenger planes in the recent months.

[whizzter]

I think much manufacturing adheres to the die-young, die-old principle (Often mentioned in the Backblaze reports), manufacturing defects shows up early on, time of stillness and then as it ages it starts to fail.

The tracks were laid in May 2025, that means no winters had passed before now and any defects in the tracks due to temperature differences hadn't had a chance to appear before now.

[1718627440]

Railways are neither consumer electronics, nor software. There is a final inspection after construction work, in which the network operator releases the constructor from responsibilities, which should catch any issues. When the network operator later claims, that there was a manufacturing defect, the first question is why didn't it has known earlier, because that is their job.

[locknitpicker]

> So I would standby for this tragedy to be used for political purposes

This is an ignorant opinion. For multiple reasons.

Derailing under these circumstances is a track issue, which means ADIF, the state's infrastructure maintainer, is under suspicion. Not operators, the state's infrastructure maintainer.

Liberalization of the railway sector is an EU-wide mandate. It's not some whimsical slip of a single country's leadership.

Years ago there was an AVE derailment in Santiago de Compostela. No one banned RENFE from the lines.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

>Derailing under these circumstances is a track issue, which means ADIF, the state's infrastructure maintainer, is under suspicion.

This is the most likely outcome, but it is not as cut-and-dried as you are presenting it.

It could be a broken rail weld, it could be track sabotage, it could be a broken wheel or bogie... we don't know yet.

[locknitpicker]

> It could be a broken rail weld, it could be track sabotage, it could be a broken wheel or bogie... we don't know yet.

Yes, the root cause is still unknown, and an investigation needs to happen to determine the root cause.

Sabotage or not, the infrastructure is by far the most likely suspect.

Even in the Santiago de Compostela accident, the root cause was the way the Spanish high speed railway infrastructure was mismanaged. Originally they tried to throw the train conductor under the proverbial bus with accusations of speeding to impress a girl, but later the investigation determined the track section failed to support basic speed limiters.

Jumping to conclusions about evil private railway operators is just ignorant and dumb.

[ThePowerOfFuet]

>later the investigation determined the track section failed to support basic speed limiters.

ASFA has no notion of a speed limit. Spanish HSLs have subsequently been resignalled to ETCS, which adds speed control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anuncio_de_Se%C3%B1ales_y_Fren...