Italy crash blamed on railway EU fund delays
Print Edition
ITALIAN officials yesterday cited delayed, EU-financed rail improvements and the “risky,” antiquated telephone alert system used in parts of Italy as possible underlying causes of a violent head-on train crash that killed some two dozen people.
Recovery operations continued yesterday using a giant crane to remove the mangled cars and debris of the two commuter trains that slammed into one another on Tuesday in southern Puglia.
The official death toll stood at 23, including a farmer working his fields who was killed by flying debris from the crash. The prefect of Barletta, Clara Minerva, said relatives reported another four people unaccounted-for and suggested that their remains could have been scattered within the wreckage.
As a result Transport Minister Graziano Delrio put the provisional death toll at 27.
Delrio confirmed that the particular stretch of track between the towns of Andria and Corato didn’t have an automatic alert system that would engage if two trains were close by and on the same track. Rather, the system relied on stationmasters phoning one another to advise of a departing train.
The phone system “leaves an entirely human management and is among the least evolved and most risky ways of regulating railway circulation”, Delrio told parliament. Under the system, he said, the stationmaster can only allow the train to leave if it is confirmed that the line is free at the arrival station, allowing only one train at a time on the single railway.
Andria Mayor Nicola Giorgino said the crash was particularly tragic and “paradoxical” since work was to begin within months to build a second track on the route.
In fact, the work was supposed to have begun years ago, and EU funding was sealed when it was first mooted for 2007-2013. According to the national investment agency Invitalia, the EU Regional Development Fund had approved 62 percent of the 180-million-euro (US$200 million) investment for north Bari rail improvement that included a second track for the Corato-Andria line.
But it was never built. Delrio didn’t explain why, but noted that Puglia officials had secured funding for the 2014-2020 budget and that bidding for contracts was to have begun on July 19.
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