A broken down electric train significantly delayed several trips in the direction of Skulte / Article

The company “Pasažieru vilciens” informed that this morning after six o’clock in the morning, the security system of the “Škoda” train traveling from Skulte to Riga was activated at the Zvejniekciems stop, which blocked the entire train, which could not continue. The company argued that there is only a single-track road in that section. This means that the other formations cannot bypass the broken train. Therefore, several other formations were also affected this morning.

Four trains between Saulkrasti and Skulta and one between Zvejniekciem and Riga have been cancelled; in general, trains were delayed up to half an hour or more.

The company said that the broken train has been taken to the depot, where “Škoda” specialists are explaining the problem. However, the question arises as to how the problems still appear from time to time, despite the fact that the “Passenger train”, before putting the “Škoda” vehicles into traffic, drove even hundreds of kilometers during dynamic testing.

“If we talk about the specific situation, the reasons can be different. It can also be a problem in the settings that have been made in the relevant system. Therefore, solving the issue, maybe with the settings, maybe there is no problem at all. You just need to change this in the system, and maybe in the future this safety circuit will not work. So I would not say that maybe there are some defects in the trains, rather it is about some kind of data that is entered into this system. Sometimes the driver manages to bypass this system and the train is possible to continue the traffic. Today, for some reason, the maneuver failed,” explained “Passenger Train” representative Edgars Butāns.

He also pointed out that the punctuality of the trains is better than last year, when only the old trains ran until December 15.

Therefore, the situation is currently within normal limits. But the company cannot clearly answer whether such problems may recur.

“As we have said before, this is work not with equipment, but with electronics, software. We need to understand how this software behaves in one or another situation. Of course, we are still learning,” Butāns said. “As I said, the train is one big computer. If that computer doesn’t like something, the computer is smart enough to signal it itself.”

Passengers can apply for compensation by submitting an application to “vivi.lv”. Of the 32 trainsets that “Škoda” has to hand over to “Passenger Train” by July, the Latvian company now has 22 trainsets, almost all of which carry passengers. That means we still have ten lineups to look forward to in two months.

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