Automation and signaling on Greek railways

The tragic rail collision in northern Greece earlier this week that killed dozens of passengers and injured scores of others was the result of an almost 10-year history of omissions and incorrect – maybe even intentionally harmful – handling of the country’s railways. The new evidence that is gradually coming to light regarding a modernization project that, had it been carried out as planned, we would not be mourning dozens of people, shows that successive governments were indifferent to the problems that had bogged down the project.

Instead, it was the intervention of the European Commission in 2018 which forced Greece to return 2.4 million euros that “awakened” the state, indicating a deeper problem with the contractors.

In 2014, ERGOSE, the construction arm of state-run railway company OSE, signed a contract assigning a private company to make the automatic operation and signaling system operational again. The system had been installed a decade earlier and had fallen into disrepair due to damage and sabotage – mainly cable theft and destruction of the infrastructure.

The project is called “Reconstruction of the automatic operation and signaling system and replacement of 70 track changes in identified sections of the Athens-Thessaloniki axis” and the contractor is a joint venture of TOMI (a subsidiary of Greek infrastructure group Ellaktor) and French rolling stock manufacturer Alstom. The contract had an initial budget of 41 million euros and the deadline for its completion was two years – that is, in 2016.

As early as 2016, the project began to receive successive extensions until, according to sources at the Ministry of Infrastructure, it ground to a halt

Consecutive extensions

However, problems started appearing very soon. As early as 2016, the project began to receive successive extensions until, according to sources at the Ministry of Infrastructure, it ground to a halt.

Given that the project was financed by European Union’s National Strategic Reference Framework, Greece’s Financial Audit Committee (EDEL) intervened, carrying out an audit in October and November 2018. In the audit report, EDEL found serious problems in the section of the tracks from the Acharnes Railway Center to Platy, and requested the recovery of 2.42 million euros from the project manager, ERGOSE.

According to the decision of the then Deputy Finance Minister Giorgos Chouliarakis on June 26, 2019, which validated EDEL’s audit report, “the above fiscal correction is imposed for the non-preparation and approval of the studies by the lending company (that is, Alstom) using the specialized staff and experience it has in signaling-automatic operation projects, as well as the failure to provide the specialized experience and know-how during the execution of the works by the contracting consortium.” In other words, two years after the initial contract deadline, part of the necessary studies had not been prepared and approved, while part of the works that had been carried out could not be certified.

This development indicated that the contract was now on the brink of being scrapped – yet the “national plan” submitted by the Ministry of Infrastructure in 2018 to the EU authorities claimed that the project could be completed in early 2019, deliberately misleading EU authorities. Furthermore, the state did not protect itself. Instead of declaring the rights of the joint venture (which was responsible for this problem, according to EDEL’s conclusion) revoked, ERGOSE chose to give successive extensions to the project, accepting (albeit partially) responsibility for the delay. Thus, the project’s final deadline reached March 2023, while a further extension until September was at hand.

Another 13.3 million euros

The mandatory return of part of the European funding forced some changes in the project. At the beginning of 2021, TOMI withdrew, assigning to Alstom its technical work on the electronic systems (it formally remained in the consortium) through a private agreement. Subsequently, one year later, at the end of 2022, a supplementary contract was signed with the consortium (essentially with Alstom), amounting to 13.3 million euros, for the completion of the project. All these delays, of course, contributed to the fact that there is still no modern automatic operation and signaling system, nor has ERGOSE installed the European Train Control System (ETCS), which takes control if the permissible speed is exceeded. These are systems that could have prevented Tuesday night’s tragedy.