Train accident in Greece exposes the neglect of the railway network | – #Train #accident #Greece #exposes #neglect #railway #network

ATHENS, March 6 (Reuters) – On February 7 Greece railway workers from another minor accident on the network earlier this year complaint issued a statement saying a more serious incident was imminent without immediate improvements to security systems.

“We will not wait for an accident to happen to see everyone shed crocodile tears … safety must be at the forefront,” the rail workers’ union wrote.

It turned out to be tragically prescient. Three weeks later, a passenger train with more than 350 people on board crashed on the Athens-Thessaloniki line, both at 160 km/h (100 mph) collided head-on with a speeding freight train.

Greece The most terrible iron in history way at least 57 people in the accident perished has been

While investigators are still piecing together the events that led to last Tuesday’s crash, the government says initial indications point to human error.

A duty station in the nearby town of Larissa chief charged with several crimes and pending trial imprisonment was done. His lawyer said he took “proportionate” responsibility, but that other factors played a role.

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Some rail workers and industry sources who spoke to Reuters pointed to the remote monitoring and signaling systems that monitor train movements and direct drivers, saying they have not been working properly for years.

Government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou said on Monday that Larissa station has a local signaling system that tracks trains at a distance of about 5 km (3 miles). This meant that stationmasters had to communicate with each other, drivers had to communicate by radio to cover gaps, and signals were operated manually.

Rail unions blame underinvestment and staff shortages, a legacy of Greece’s decade-long debt crisis.

An iron that is close to the point way “This section has been a black hole,” the source said, referring to the rail line near Larissa.

A source told Reuters: “That’s why Europe iron way according to the rules, the station masters had to communicate with each other as soon as the train entered or left the station.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has accepted some of the criticism, facing growing public anger over the disaster months before his term ends. He apologized on Sunday on behalf of himself and previous governments, saying that if the remote systems had been fully operational, it would have been “impossible for the accident to occur in practice”.

State-owned, responsible for managing and maintaining the railway infrastructure Greece The management of the Railways Organization (OSE) resigned after the accident. The OSE declined to comment on Reuters questions about the state of its security systems, citing the resignation.

Oikonomou said that the accident occurred in an area where remote monitoring and alarm systems have not yet been installed. According to him, systems that can prevent such an accident have been installed in 70% of the Athens-Thessaloniki line.

GOING BACK

OSE 2007 to 2010until 2008, he conducted remote observation of the part where the accident occurred, and the former station of the company that built and managed the technology in Larissa chief Yiannis Kollatos told Reuters.

But 2010In the years since , the system has gradually collapsed, as a lack of funding and manpower cuts have led to faulty maintenance of equipment, a railway source said.

OSE management consultant Panagiotis Terezakis agrees.

“After 2011, this system gradually began to collapse. It was not maintained until the remote control system almost completely collapsed,” he told Reuters.

Terezakis and the government said cable theft was common throughout the network. “If one part of the system is down and I don’t have the staff to fix it, other parts of the system start to fail,” Terezakis said.

OSE, which collapsed under Greece’s first bailout in 2010, issued a statement on Sunday saying it would do everything possible to bring justice to the cause of the crash.

In 2014, the OSE ordered the reconstruction of the remote traffic control and signaling system, which should be completed in 2016. But nearly a decade later, the equipment has not been installed on the 2,500 km (1,550 mi) rail network.

Under this plan, OSE’s construction manager ERGOSE signed a €43 million contract with engineering company Alstom Transport and Greece’s Tomi SA in 2014 to restore remote monitoring and signaling for parts of the Athens-Thessaloniki route.

Alstom said it was fully cooperating with the Greek authorities and customers to “assist with its technical expertise in the analysis of recorded data on sections of the line already equipped”.

Terezakis said that the remote control system currently covers about 55% of the railway network, with the rest of the equipment being acquired by September.

ERGOSE also on railways and trains Europe It is responsible for the installation of the Train Control System (ETCS), an EU-wide standard that allows constant monitoring and emergency braking of moving trains. Such a system Franceother such as Germany and Belgium Europe also applied in other countries.

The company has delivered roadside equipment for part of the Athens-Thessaloniki route, but the remote control and signaling system must be fully operational on each section before it can be operational.

“CHRONIC ILLNESSES”

Due to the natural disaster, the railway workers who went on strike last week repeatedly due to the lack of workers complaint they did.

“Currently 133 stations chief there are, while their number should have been 411″, said the third official of OSE.

A few weeks before the crash, OSE, according to a company filing, April tried to hire 73 temporary station masters for a period of six months starting from

Hours before the massacre, another service on the same route was delayed after the train hit high-voltage cables as it entered the station. The service was suspended and passengers were taken to Thessaloniki by bus. A similar incident with a cut cable was recorded in October 2022.

The safety systems of the Hellenic Railway Regulatory Authority national and said that it has started an investigation to check whether it complies with European regulations.

The regulator said in its latest comprehensive safety report since 2019 that theft and financial problems have led to the destruction of signaling equipment along all major rail corridors.

The government has promised to find the root cause of Tuesday’s tragedy, and a prosecutor has been appointed.

“It’s not one or two reasons. This is due to the chronic diseases and weaknesses of the Greek public administration,” said the government spokesman Oikonomou.

Added by Angeliki Koutantou in Athens, Michele Kambas in Nicosia, Renee Maltezou in Athens and Silvia Aloisi in Paris report; Edited by Alex Richardson

Our standards: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

2023-03-06 19:48:30
Source – reuters

Translation“24 HOURS”