The French railway train company SNCF has reportedly ordered two thousand new trains that are too wide to use in some of the regional stations.
The French railway train company SNCF has reportedly ordered two thousand new trains that are too wide to use in some of the regional stations.
Construction work began shortly after the discovery of the miscalculations, and around 13 hundred train platforms have to be altered in order to accommodate the new trains, driving up costs on the project that have already reached around 20 and a half billion dollars.
The new trains are expected to start being used in the year 2016, if the rest of the project goes as planned.
The French national rail operator RFF, gave the wrong dimensions to the SNCF because they only measured regional train platforms that had been built 30 years ago, and didn’t include the older platforms from more than 50 years ago in their report.
French Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier said the problem was caused by an “absurd rail system.”
Cuvillier is quoted as saying: “When you separate the rail operator from the train company, this is what happens.”
RFF president Jacques Rapoport said his company didn’t notice the problem until it was too late, but any change requires some modification of the infrastructure, so the remodeled train platforms should be made more accessible for passengers with lower mobility.
