Slower trains: why there are services that take twice as long as 30 years ago

A decade has passed since the first steps were taken to unite the country again by passenger train.

Modern cars, recovered branches, renovated sections of track and cheap tickets.

Restated railways.

But, also,

, sections in poor condition, level crossings everywhere and a service that gets into the rail windows that the freighters leave them as best they can.

Today there are long-distance trains from the Capital to Mar del Plata, Pinamar, Rosario, Córdoba, Tucumán, Junín, Justo Daract (San Luis) and Bragado (which in some cases reaches Pehuajó).

The renewal of tracks began in 2013 with the management of the then Minister of the Interior and Transport, Florencio Randazzo, which was followed by the purchase of rolling stock and, in 2014, the renationalization

The latest advance is the extension of the Justo Daract service, which this month will begin to reach Palmira,

This adds meaning to a journey that, until now, ends in a town of just 12,000 inhabitants 130 kilometers from the city of San Luis.

But the trip from the Capital to Palmyra

This is not the only passenger train that runs slow.

To Tucumán, 31. To Bahía Blanca, between 19 and 20, when until recently it took 13.

whose cargo concession is owned by FerroExpreso Pampeano SA (FEPSA), has forced the speed to drop for months in this particular branch.

A

three weeks ago keeps this service canceled at least until this Sunday inclusive.

The train to Mar del Plata in Constitución;

Although it is one of the branches that works best, it takes longer than 30 years ago and has fewer frequencies.

Photo: Andrés D'Elia

Of these nine railway routes from CABA,

, not only in terms of demand and density of their destination cities, but also in duration of the trip: about six and a half hours, two more than in the fifty but much less than what it takes per kilometer in the rest of the long-distance journeys.

However, in all branches

In this scenario, questions arise.

How to add frequencies?

Why are they slow?

Is it preferable to invest in rail routes that work less or prioritize the resources that work better, such as trains from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata and Rosario?

Specialists and officials respond.

Advertising of the train to Mar del Plata circa 1970. Source: Digital Railway Archive

Why does it take longer than 30 years ago?

The average speed of these trains varies, even between the two most successful passenger routes, Mar del Plata and Rosario.

While the trip in both lasts the same in the common service (6.20 hours) and is only six minutes apart in the express,

, the busiest station. close to the center of Rosario.

The train to the city of Santa Fe should arrive earlier, but it doesn't.

It is that the tracks were renewed between 2014 and 2016 along both routes, except between Rosario Sur and Rosario Norte, a section controlled by the cargo operator Nuevo Central Argentino (NCA, from Aceitera General Deheza).

, forcing you to slow down and take 42 minutes on a journey that takes 21 minutes by car.

Adding to the problem is the lack of bypass roads in the first section of that trip, between Retiro and José León Suárez.

That makes it take the same time in that section as the suburban trains, one hour instead of 40 minutes.

Nor does the

and maintenance crews to a minimum, dragged along the route to Rosario for decades, because it is considered a cargo concession.

This lack of bypass roads also alters the schedule of the branch to Bragado and Pehuajó.

This was demonstrated by the derailment of a Sarmiento Railroad train at the height of Castelar two weeks ago, which affected the long-distance service that departed from Eleven hours later, since it must pass through the same track.

Another of the culprits of the low speed are

“The State had placed 35 barriers that NCA never put into operation and many were spoiled.

They were recovered, but not all.

This forces you to slow down at intersections”, highlights Galileo Vidoni, specialist in Transport Policy and Planning (UNSAM) and Master in Urban Planning and Mobility (UBA-Technical University of Berlin). 

The train to Mendoza now takes 36 hours.

Photo: Los Andes newspaper.

Why aren't there more frequencies?

Except for Rosario and Mar del Plata,

the rest of the long-distance routes have very few frequencies.

Junín and Pinamar offer a daily service in each direction.

Bragado has four per sense per week.

There are two weekly per direction in Tucumán, and one weekly per direction in Justo Daract and Córdoba.

When it was working, the Bahía Blanca branch had two outbound services and two return services.

On the most successful rail routes there is also great room for improvement.

There are

, which increase to 48 in summer. For Buenos Aires-Rosario, there are 24. Between two and six daily services on each branch most of the year.

But

per direction in the branch of the first, and between seven and eight daily per direction in the second.

Even Ferrobaires, in 2004, offered up to seven daily trains to Mar del Plata and as many back.

In the Ministry of Transport they believe that the cause of the problem differs in each route.

In most, the main one is the state of the roads.

“We find ourselves with

, level crossings, signaling, safety regulations.

There were even trees on the roads”, recalls the Minister of Transportation, Diego Giuliano, in reference to the recovery of the branches, privatized or directly canceled during the Menemism.

On the branch to Rosario, the main culprit is

, that is, the time slots available for the passenger train that leaves the cargo service, historically prioritized on the way to the most important agro-export node in the country.

Departure lounge in Constitución.

The train to Mar del Plata is one of the best, although it takes longer than 30 years ago and there are fewer frequencies.

Photo: Andres D'Elia

“

, not because of a problem with the roads, but because of the guidelines and precautions established by the cargo concessionaire.

We agreed to resume the Zárate-Rosario railway infrastructure, which was taken over by SOFSE (Trenes Argentinos Operaciones), and thus we reduced the trip by two hours”, celebrates Giuliano.

The operator of that route continues to be the NCA cargo.

Cargo concessions are concentrated in its hands and in those of Ferrosur and FEPSA, and it will continue to be so for at least 14 more months, thanks to another extension granted by the Ministry of Transportation in December, after a tender that ended up deserted.

These companies are

“From the cargo concessions, almost the entire railway network was handed over to

.

Maintenance for the passenger train was reduced to a minimum - Vidoni denounces -.

The cargo can circulate at 30 kilometers per hour without this being a problem for logistics times”.

In travel times to Mar del Plata, on the other hand, the

“The available long-distance park is 240 modern and comfortable Chinese CNR cars.

The issue is that this fleet is completely insufficient to add supply and

, laments Vidoni.

“There was an agreement with Russia that obviously fell through.

But we are working on the possibility of advancing with China in infrastructure and rolling stock”, says Giuliano.

He says it days after US President Joe Biden complained to Alberto Fernández for the Chinese presence in Argentina and the latter cooled down some agreements, which, they say in this portfolio, will not affect this particular negotiation.

Quality or quantity?

“We will continue to improve the service to Mar del Plata and Rosario, but in the meantime there is the social train.

What happens with someone who works in Buenos Aires in construction or in domestic service and wants to see his family again, and these trains are five times less expensive?” Giuliano raises.

For the minister, first the branch is recovered.

If the security conditions are given, it is resumed.

And only afterwards is it optimized.

To get to Mendoza, we had to do the embankment of the La Picasa lagoon.

There we were able to reach Rufino in 2021. In 2022, Justo Daract.

, hopes Giuliano.

For specialists, on the other hand, the path is the other way around.

“In operational and service terms,

Wait for the road to be renewed, to recover barriers and diversions, and to close level crossings, and only then launch it”, says Vidoni.

Andrés Gartner, an economist specializing in Urban Economics and Transportation, and senior adviser at the Ministry of Transportation during the administration of Guillermo Dietrich, falls into this line.

"If in Mendoza you have a train once a week and it takes 23 hours,

," he says.

“To reach the rest of the country, a level of investment in roads is needed and to begin to resolve network organization issues, such as who really manages the road windows.

Today

to sow long-distance passenger trains everywhere”, says Gartner.

Passengers at the Constitución station, about to board the train to Mar del Plata.

Photo: Andres D'Elia

For the specialist,

, inherited from decades ago, does not even make sense.

“Today there is a higher rate of private motorization than 60 years ago and there are low cost airlines.

Even if times improve, people may not want to spend hours and hours sitting down to go from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, but demand will be generated for a sum of various services with high occupancy factors between closer cities.

must be channeled

into those branches where there is an opportunity to generate economies of scale, such as Mar del Plata and Rosario.

If you added frequencies and shortened the travel time, people would start to choose this mode not so much for the price of the ticket but for the transportation alternative it constitutes.

You don't have to drive and you can even work on the train”.

The current existence of low cost only partially resolves the issue, not only because the ticket is more expensive but also because the plane makes point-to-point routes, while the

With this caveat, it remains unclear whether or not the small towns where the less competitive routes end are the destination of the public targeted by the train with its accessible ticket.

And to what extent a worker, especially if his position is precarious, can take so many hours to travel, even to large cities, such as San Miguel de Tucumán, from which up to 62 hours round trip separate him.

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