Renfe denied in January 2021 a private request to publish the tender documents for the 31 metric gauge trains for the commuter and medium-distance network in the north of the country, in Cantabria and Asturias, alluding to the confidentiality of its content.
According to a document consulted by Europa Press and signed by the president of the public company, Isaías Táboas, the request was channeled in November 2020 through the Transparency Portal, five months after Renfe awarded the contract to CAF for 190 million of euros.
Renfe’s negative response came on January 11, 2021, just when the Basque Country-based train manufacturer told Renfe that there was an error in the technical details of the tender, specifically on gauges.
To deny the publication request, Renfe justified that the document contained details about its business and exploitation plans, assuring that it was “valuable information, expensive to preparewhich is reserved, and therefore must be subject to special protection”.
He also alluded to “risk of trade secrets being disclosed to competitors“, which, in his opinion, could affect its competitive position in the market. However, Renfe has no competitors in this network. For this reason, it also points to its competition with other means of transport: “the rules of healthy competition in the transport market”.
“There is no justification for said company, due to the mere fact of public ownership of its shares, to have to disclose information related to a contracting procedure that it must be treated as confidential, being evident that the rest of its competitors do not make it public”, adds the company supported with public resources.
It does not make the specifications public
In none of the large train purchase contracts, Renfe publishes the tender documents, but it is about lThe only application denied in recent years and a project that has already accumulated three years of delays and that will significantly affect the quality of public service for Cantabrians and Asturians, who already have a railway network that dates back to the 19th century.
Despite the fact that in September 2021 all the parties involved (Renfe, CAF, Adif and the Railway Safety Agency) agreed on a solution – the use of the so-called comparative method – in all this time no progress has been made in the design and no that the trains come into operation until 2026.
Renfe alludes to the fact that the gauge information contained in the tender came from the Network Statement that Adif makes, which would be the origin of the problem, however the gauges are not specified in that document.
Using the comparative method
In any case, both companies are public and belong to the Ministry of Transport, although Renfe has a greater reputational risk, since it is the operator in front of the citizens, especially now that high-speed competition has entered, while Adif, as network manager, has a more technical nature.
Beyond the initial error, the anger of the Cantabrians, especially its president, Miguel Ángel Revilla, is the paralysis that this project has suffered despite the fact that a solution was found more than a year ago and that it had been hidden until ‘El Comercio’ uncovered it a few weeks ago.
In fact, this comparative method solution has already been applied to another contract during this time, in this case from Adif, which in April 2022, before bids were submitted, already attached an explanatory note to a contract for three locomotives tendered two months before to give this possibility to the bidding companies.
The use of this method has not led to any delay in this contract, work on which began on November 28, and Stadler, the company that won the tender, is going to request a 2700 series train to use as a base for the construction of the three new locomotives, as reported to Europa Press in sources of the railway manager.