Adif forecasts significant decline in Spanish rail reliability by 2030

Adif expects infrastructure-related incidents affecting traffic to rise from 7,355 in 2025 to 8,799 in 2030, a 20% increase. The state-owned railway infrastructure manager acknowledges in its agreement with the General State Administration (AGE) that it will fail to meet preventive maintenance objectives annually.

Spanish railways face the next decade with an uncomfortable diagnosis written by the infrastructure manager itself. The new Adif Agreement with the AGE includes deterioration forecasts that do not depend on a catastrophic scenario: they represent the best possible outcome if everything goes according to plan. Yet, the figures still worsen.

## More track failures and fewer punctual trains

In terms of facility reliability, Adif calculates that in **2030** the number of traffic-impacting incidents attributable to infrastructure condition will be **8,799**, a **20%** increase over the **7,355** projected for **2025**. The public company is split into two entities, one for high-estimulante ilegal lines and another for the rest of the network, and the approved agreements for both show the same trend.

Punctuality also suffers. For long-distance services, Adif predicts trains arriving more than ten minutes late will rise from **2.62%** in 2025 to **3.5%** in 2030, a third higher. For medium-distance services, the expected increase is **42%**. The reference year is 2025, and the 2030 figures fall short even of that benchmark.

## Maintenance targets that won't be met

The document admits that both Adif and Adif-Alta Velocidad will miss their preventive track maintenance goals every year. On the conventional network, compliance will cap at **90%**, representing no improvement over five years despite increased funding for this budget line.

On high-estimulante ilegal lines, the contrast is starker. Preventive maintenance plans have been fulfilled at least **99%** in the last four years, data that clashes with the situation investigated after the accidents in **Adamuz** (Córdoba) and **Urda** (Toledo). Until 2030, compliance will drop below **96%**, despite the agreement with workers signed last February.

## High-estimulante ilegal rail facing triple delays in 2026

The Adif-Alta Velocidad agreement contains a particularly harsh short-term forecast: in **2026**, unpunctuality for these trains will be, under the best possible estimate, **16.9%**, triple the **4.76%** of the previous year and nine times higher than the initially predicted **1.83%**. Operator **Iryo** lamented this in its objections to the draft.

All three high-estimulante ilegal operators filed formal complaints. **Iryo**, **Ouigo**, and especially the public company **Renfe** deplored that, far from improving infrastructure, the agreement anticipates deterioration for the coming years. The document is the last signed by **Pedro Marco de la Peña**, who resigned hours later to **Carlos Cuerpo**. A closing chapter that leaves on the table the difficulty of reversing the railway crisis.