City governor Mauricio Macri announced yesterday that the city of Buenos Aires will take over control of the subte from 1^st January 2013.

During a press conference held on Tuesday, Macri announced his decision to finally take responsibility for the supervision of the subte, after having repelled the idea during the last months. Now, he justifies his decision by criticising the national government.

“We are left with no other option than to face the authoritarianism and neglect of the national government”, he said.

Macri avoided giving any financial information regarding the transfer, or any possible increase of prices to make the seven underground lines keep running during next year.

“Don’t rush this,” he solicited the press, and asked for patience: “let them send the bill to the legislature, and we will deal with it from there”.

However, he made clear that “his government will not give up their claims in all areas,” and that “the situation demands that we all work together for the best solution”.

The dispute between the national and city government regarding the transfer of responsibility for the subte has been going on for almost a year. At the end of 2011 President Cristina Fernández announced that she was going to pass the undeground network over to Macri, who disclaimed the responsibility and responded that they needed more time before a take-over could take place.

After many discussions about supervision and pricing the two governments had not been able to reach an agreement, and in August the conflict reached a peak and the dispute lead to the longest subte strike in Buenos Aires’ history.

Emergency workers onsite at the smashed train at Once train station. (Photo: Patricio Murphy)

On 22nd February, Argentina suffered one of the worst train accidents in its history. Fifty-one people died and 703 were injured. Initial reports indicated that a failure in the brakes made the train slide into the shock absorbers at Once station.

Roque Cirigliano, speaking on behalf of Trenes de Buenos Aires (TBA) the company operating the Sarmiento line where the accident took place said it was possible the incident was the result of a “human error”. Marcos Antonio Córdoba, the 28-year-old train driver, explained to a judge that he tried twice to brake but the systems did not respond. Juan Pablo Schiavi, the transport secretary expressed his condolences and launched an investigation into the incident.

The country wants answers. Although this incident was one of the most deadly, fatalities on the railroads are all too common. Last year 23 people died in train accidents across the country and at least 300 were injured.

On a typical Sunday 11 days after the crash, another train on the Sarmiento line was delayed because someone was killed on the tracks. José Luis, a funeral worker from Buenos Aires province, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and engaged in a debate with the woman standing next to him. She blamed the person walking on the tracks, he thought it was symbolic of the bigger picture. “They don’t put enough money into maintaining the service,” he said. “The money the government gives the companies for maintenance just disappears.”

The neglect of the Sarmiento line is obvious to anyone who travels on it. The floors in the carriages are peeling, chunks are missing from interiors and often lights do not work. Trains crunch along the tracks and travel with their doors open but the problems are not just superficial: mechanical issues are endemic. Of the eight pressurised brakes on the train involved in the accident, it is reported that only five were working properly. Some of the trains are so decrepit that more experienced drivers refuse to operate them.

“What happened here could have been avoided,” José Luis said. “It’s not this bad on the Mitre line; that’s for a different class of people.”

Inequality on the Tracks

This is the sinister reality of train services in Buenos Aires. TBA operates the Sarmiento and Mitre train lines in the capital, which transport around 180 million passengers a year. Mitre runs in the more affluent northern area in the city; according to the transport secretariat’s statistics, 24% of its commuters are university educated. Sarmiento carries around 25,000 more passengers a day between Once and the province and under 11% of its passengers have finished university.

Two of the most devastating train accidents in Argentina in the past year occured on the Sarmiento line. Last month’s accident took 51 lives and last September 11 people died when two trains and a bus collided near Flores station.

Verónica Pérez is a sociologist from the Instituto Gino Germani at the University of Buenos Aires and has studied the state of urban trains in Buenos Aires. “The Sarmiento line is far less well looked after,” she says, ”even the employees of the national transport commission said so; they talk about how, ‘all the meat from the asado goes to Mitre’.”

Protestors hold up signs calling out the corruption at TBA. (Photo: Patricio Murphy)

This iniquitous distribution of ‘meat’ raises the question of where the money comes from and how it is administered; it is here that the issue becomes more complicated and where the notion of responsibility becomes diffuse.

In the 1990s during Carlos Menem’s presidency, Argentina went through a wave of privatisation. Nearly everything was sold off and a number of services, including the train lines, were granted to private companies. “Granting isn’t the same as a privatising,” Pérez explained, “the government didn’t sell all the railroad material, they remain the property of the state.”

The company is charged with running the train service and the government has to ensure that a minimum of quality and safety is provided. The minister of the economy fixes the fares and the government gives the train company subsidies for providing a public service. “It’s a system that works with the state and the companies. It’s the company’s responsibility to operate the service, but it’s the state’s role to control it.“

The Cirigliano family own TBA and have done so since the mid-90s. Two brothers, Mario and Claudio Cirigliano inherited a couple of colectivo lines from their bus driver father. They acted shrewdly during Menem’s privatisations, snapping up a few state companies and have since enjoyed a blistering rise to prominence. They are today considered one of the most powerful families in the country and their influence stretches well beyond the transport sector.

The government gives them millions of pesos in subsidies to invest in maintenance and running costs of their trains. In January, the month prior to the tragic crash, the government gave TBA a staggering $77m in subsidies. Many people believe that it is the misuse of this money that is at the heart of the calamitous state of the trains. A piece of graffiti on a wall near Once station puts it bluntly: “TBA – Corruption kills.”

Quintessential Argentine Businessmen

One of the most vociferous among their detractors is former Buenos Aires province deputy, Sebastián Cinquerrui. He wrote an exhaustive paper entitled, ‘TBA and the Cirigliano Group; the quintessence of Argentine businessmen’ in which he highlighted the unsavoury dealings of the group.

“The operational mould of this business group was to use its political influence to incur benefits,” he wrote. “They made their own business deals with the money coming from the state that is supposed to finance the operation of their ‘granted’ railroad service.”

He cites a well-documented case from 1998 in which the group bought material at 4000% of its real price, a deal that is made easier because the Cirigliano Group also owns a company that constructs material for railroads, Emfer S.A., which generally wins TBA’s maintenance contracts. “With their subsidies, instead of investing them, they reported the highest overheads they could and that was their way of making the biggest profit possible.” Verónica Pérez explained. Money that should have been spent on rail maintenance was not; most people believe this was not an isolated incident.

The Ciriglianos have had close ties with every government since Menem and many believe that they get treated to favourable contracts as a result. “This type of management is only possible …  with complicity from the relevant employees and the highest authorities in the political power,” Cinquerrui wrote.

Ricardo Jaime, the ex-transport secretary and a close political ally of former president Néstor Kirchner had particularly strong links to the Cirigliano Group. He became embroiled in a corruption charge and was accused of accepting bribes and flying in private jets paid for by the businessmen whose companies he was giving subsidies to, among them the Cirigliano Group. He resigned in 2009, citing “personal reasons”.

State Responsibility

Corruption Kills. (Photo: Patricio Murphy)

Overt corruption is not the only problem, however. According to Pérez, the government’s job is to “provide investment”, but also to “make sure the money is spent in the right way”. It is this second duty that is apparently not being fulfilled. The political will to improve the trains does seem to be there – investments have increased exponentially in the past few years – but as long as the money is not being invested where it needs to be, progress will not be made.

Cinquerrui put it in no uncertain terms in a radio interview with Cadena 3 two days after the crash: “The more you invest [in maintenance], the less accidents there are; the less you invest, the more accidents there are.”

Whether the misuse of funds is due to carelessness on the government’s part or direct complicity is another investigation altogether but many people now consider the current system of privately-run public services defunct. Running railroads safely with good service, especially when fares are fixed at a low price, does not make for a great business model. Private companies whose main priority is reporting profits are prone to cut corners, and that can have tragic consequences.

“The logic of state regulation is not the same as the logic of businesses,” Verónica Pérez explained. One has a responsibility to citizens; the other has a responsibility to shareholders. Juan Carlos Cena, who has worked on Argentine railroads his whole life and written two books about the subject, was unequivocal in his analysis after the crash. “The chaos of Wednesday 22nd February is the product of the politics of concessions (granting),” he wrote on his website.

The unfortunate reality is that it often takes a tragic event like last month’s accident to galvanise politicians into action. The government has taken control of TBA’s urban train service while the investigation is ongoing; some believe that the move should be permanent, others want a restructuring of the whole system. The fact of the matter is: 51 people did lose their lives because of a “human error” last month.

It is now left to the Argentine justice system to determine whose error it was.

Find out what locals think about the state of the trains here.

Since the fatal Once train crash on 22 February, which left 51 dead and more than 700 injured, train operator Trains of Buenos Aires (TBA) has come under severe media scrutiny. The company, whose infrastructure has been called “obsolete”, has admitted to serious oversights in its system. At the same time, it has pointed to the failure of the government to invest in the train networks.

The crash, the worst train disaster in Argentina in decades, has brought the issue of poor maintenance and lack of security regulations to the forefront. The Once riot that followed the discovery of the body of Lucas Menghini Rey, 48 hours after the crash, was emblematic of the anger and frustration experienced by many Argentines.

Many of the problems brought to light in recent weeks have been linked to a decades-old system of privatisation and insufficient government investment. A new round of negotiations concerning the handover of the subte from federal to city hands has done nothing to placate the unrest. Rather than addressing the issue, responsibility seems to have been deflected back and forth between governing bodies.

Who, if anyone, is to blame for the disaster? And what does your average commuter think about the trains in their city? The Argentina Independent hit the streets to find out.

Elena Antonich, 55, cleaner, Campana

It’s 20 years since I’ve taken trains on a frequent basis. The service was so bad that I had to resort to taking the bus, even though it can take over an hour longer. The government needs to start investing in our trains. Look at the Once case: the train is always packed full. What Schiavi said annoyed me – that if it had been a bank holiday, there would have been less deaths. And the same thing with Lucas – he shouldn’t have been in that compartment. Well, he had no where else to go….As for the handover  of the subte, even though I don’t agree with Macri on a lot of matters, you can understand where he’s coming from – no wants to take over a business in debt. Money needs to be invested and a press conference needs to be held if we are to move forward.

Matías, 29, literature student, Villa del Parque

The system is – there’s no doubt about it – a disaster. But the problem’s not new. The trains have been in this state for at least 30 years. Have a look at old Argentine films and you’ll see that the subte hasn’t changed a bit. We’re forced to travel like cattle. The trains are old, they’re not maintained : look at what happened in Once last week. Obviously, every politician is responsible in  the upkeep of the system but the problem is much deeper rooted that this latest episode. It goes back to the impact of imperialist nations on a developing country like Argentina.

As for the city takeover – well, that’s all a joke! Nothing is going to change there! When I take the subte in Buenos Aires, I never feel safe – but that’s all part of porteño life – you go out onto the street and you never know what’s going to happen.

Yrma Nelgia, 53, hairdresser, Province of Chaco

I don’t know where all the money is going, but since I was little there has been no progress in the state of the trains in Buenos Aires. They were all privatised, there was never any maintenance; money went into other sectors. Once is the consequence of this lack of attention. What they say is true: there’s no regulations. The trains have always been run by private companies with the consent of the government. The same with the subte: they’ve continued to be subsidised by the government and by private bodies. No one’s interested in anything. The transport secretary, Schiavi, needs to address these issues.

Alejandro Sampayo, 26, administrative worker, Belgrano

The system’s pretty antiquated. There’s been no investment in trains since the 1930s, as always happens in countries like Argentina. The investment that should go into transport ends up in other areas, so it’s no surprise that you get situations like what occurred in Once last week. It’s each man for himself here, and everyone votes for someone who they believe will change the system, but it’s always the same in Argentina. I don’t mean to say it’s the fault of the government. It’s more that people don’t respect one another….The subte improved a little when Macri was first elected but really nothing has changed, the trains still operate like they’re transporting cattle, not people.

Ricardo Nicolichi, 65, Artisan, Guernica

All the governments should be held responsible: from the civic to the military. They’ve never done anything between them. It’s been fifty years now since I begun travelling by train. They had a steam model, then a diesel, and now an electric, but no matter – it’s always been the same – we’ve always travelled like animals. A person of 70 or 80 years of age packed into a carriage like a sardine – there’s not been an ounce of progress. Argentina is lagging behind in terms of its transport system. Today with 3 million inhabitants in the city and 9 million in the province of Buenos Aires, there’s simply not enough space to accommodate everyone. The government needs to build a new train network alongside the current one. If they can build more motorways, why can’t they build more train lines? We have enough land. I don’t know if there’s no money or if we are simply lazy?