The closure of a tunnel near Barcelona for safety reasons has brought rail freight between France and Spain to a standstill for the past week. Freight trains are no longer allowed to cross the Pyrenees and are being parked on the French side, notably at Le Soler, near the border city of Perpignan.
There has been damage to the tracks in Catalonia following bad weather, putting the Rubi Tunnel out of service. The tunnel is a key link in the rail network as it allows freight trains to bypass Barcelona but there is no alternative route. As a direct consequence of the closure, the number of immobilised trains – loaded with new vehicles and containers – is increasing every day on the French side and is now estimated to total dozens.
‘Hard to predict the reopening’
“The site is currently congested. The seven tracks dedicated to train parking are full, everything is packed. Trains are also being diverted to Perpignan-Saint-Charles station (to be parked),” an SNCF official told local media. “It’s a tricky situation for everyone. For the companies waiting for their goods and for us. It requires a lot of forward planning to stop trains upstream.” Normally, 10 to 12 freight trains run every day between France and Spain via the Perthus tunnel.
“For the past week, traffic has been virtually non-existent,” said Petros Papaghiannakis, managing director of LFP Perthus, the company that managing the Perthus rail tunnel. “We don’t really have any visibility on when things will get back to normal. Spanish engineers are hard at work carrying out assessments. By Friday, we should have a timeline: a few days, a few weeks, or, I hope not, several months,” he added.
Local media also quoted another industry source who said the prolonged standstill of trains has raised concerns of the reliability of rail freight, underlining also that there was a risk of losing customers who had been convinced to switch from road to rail. “Today, they have no choice but to return to trucks. It’s easy to lose customers in three days. To win them back, it could take three months… or three years.”