Renfe Cercanías

Renfe Cercanías is a commercial division of the Spanish public railway company Renfe Viajeros, one of the companies of its parent Renfe, specialized in the operation of commuter networks, which link different points within areas metropolitan areas with high population density through high capacity and frequency lines.

A nearby train station in Jerez de la Frontera.

Renfe Cercanías is the largest of the two Renfe divisions that currently operate this type of transport, the other being Renfe Cercanías AM. With the exception of the C-9 line of its Madrid network, Cercanías offers all its services on Iberian-gauge railway routes, while all the routes of Cercanías AM are carried out on metric-gauge (AM) networks, from which its name comes. Currently, Cercanías is present in a total of 12 nuclei or suburban networks in Spain, either as the only operator or jointly with others: Asturias, Bilbao, Catalonia (Barcelona, Tarragona, Gerona and Lleida), Cádiz, Madrid, Málaga, Murcia/Alicante, Santander, San Sebastián, Seville, Valencia and Zaragoza.

In those nuclei located in communities that have several co-official languages, Renfe uses on its trains, station signage, brochures, its own transport tickets, etc. adaptations of the general/state brand in Spanish to these languages when necessary; Thus, maintaining the umbrella structure of the Renfe brands, the services also receive the name Renfe Rodalia in the Valencian Community (Murcia/Alicante and Valencia) and Renfe Aldiriak in the Basque Country (Bilbao and San Sebastián). In Catalonia, where Renfe Cercanías is the main line operator in its four nuclei, but where the Ministry of Transport no longer has any jurisdiction over the regulation of their operation (in favor of the Territory Department of the Generalitat of Catalonia and smaller bodies delegated by it), Renfe adheres to the mandate of the regional administration also in terms of corporate identity, operating its suburbs under the global brand Rodalies of Catalonia.

Nuclei and degrees of operation

A nearby train unit operated by Renfe in Santander

Currently, Renfe Cercanías exclusively operates the commuter hubs of Cádiz, Madrid, Málaga, Seville and Zaragoza. Only together with Renfe Cercanías AM it also operates several lines of the Asturias and Cantabria hubs, and is also present, together with to other regional public companies, in the commuter hubs of Bilbao, Murcia/Alicante, San Sebastián, Catalonia and Valencia. In those areas where it is not the only operator of this mode of transport, Renfe Cercanías has its own network, like the other operators, without any overlap: it does not cooperate with them on any line, nor does it share infrastructure with them. It should be noted here that Renfe does not operate today, nor has it operated in the past, any metro service, neither through this nor through any other division of the company, although it has on occasions expressed its intention to become involved in the exploitation of that kind of network.

Except in Catalonia, in all the areas where this Renfe division is present, the agent that has the highest management authority for the services provided by the company is the Ministry of Transport of the Government of Spain, since, in the absence of transfers to the autonomous communities, the result of the negotiation and agreement between the corresponding autonomous Administration and the General State Administration, it is the latter who, by default, formally holds the exclusive initiative and competence in the management of this type of services on the General Interest Railway Network (RFIG), belonging to Adif. For this reason, Renfe, as a public company that depends on the same Ministry of Transport, has a broad entity, autonomy or managing power in almost all the commuter networks under its responsibility, which is visible from trivial aspects such as corporate identity / brand used in them, even in other more substantial ones, such as the determination of the prices and variety of available or compatible travel passes, the fare zoning, the choice of priority stations and omissions on the routes, the possibility of making transfers without surcharge with other means of transport provided by third parties, or the planning of schedules and frequencies of trains, among other prominent examples.

In a growing number of nuclei, there are organizations at the territorial level (local, provincial or autonomous) that, sponsored by the public powers of the area, also act as transport authorities in the area, with levels of power or Variable powers over the different public transports present in it, depending on the circumstances of each case. In this way, through agents such as the Asturias Transport Consortium (CTA) or the Guipúzcoa Territorial Transport Authority (ATTG), sub-national institutions have been able, to varying degrees, to reach collaboration agreements with companies multimodal public transport operators in their areas of influence (among them, Renfe Cercanías) to thus achieve achievements such as the offer of integrated transport tickets (which allow free or subsidized transfers between different modes), the reduction and/or unification of fares of transport, the adaptation of schedules and the implementation of special services based on events of a different nature, etc.

Although in terms of Renfe Cercanías agreements like these have not been completely impossible in recent decades, they have generally been, to a greater extent, or with greater difficulty, than with other municipally owned operators, provincial or regional. The Ministry of Transport, as the highest authority in these cases, is always the one with the last word in decision-making, and the ability to agree between the central and regional administrations has used to depend to a large extent on the political situation in a temporary context. given. However, the agreements that these regional institutions have been able to reach with Renfe Cercanías, under these conditions, have given rise to disparate situations in different places.

As a paradigmatic example, we can mention the case of the Renfe Cercanías networks in the Basque Country, which includes the failure of Bilbao and the success of San Sebastián in terms of zone maps, fares and discounts: while in Guipúzcoa, Following the Madrid model, in 2019 ATTG managed to fully integrate the only Renfe commuter line in the province into the Mugi unified zonal fare system, in total equality with the other public transport operators in the territory, in Vizcaya, on the contrary, Renfe Cercanías applies its own map of fare zones in its network (which is not identical to the one defined by the CTB), does not allow transfers with other modes of transport, and only allows travel in ordinary fare (the same as the occasional cardboard ticket) except if you have Renfe's own multi-trip savings cards; This same circumstance applies, in the same way, to all services provided by Cercanías AM in the same province. However, those managed by Renfe are the only means of transport in Vizcaya that do not have reduced/subsidized Creditrans fares for users of the Barik card. All in all, at the end of 2022 the situation in Vizcaya is exactly the same as at the end of 2013, when the possibility of traveling in the vicinity of Renfe using said card was introduced for the first time, without any progress being made in almost one decade.

Currently, the specific case of Catalonia is the only notable exception to all of the above. Until the beginning of 2010, Renfe Cercanías operated its services in the nucleus then called Cercanías Barcelona (in Catalan, Rodalies Barcelona) in the same way as it continues to do in the majority of the other local networks in which it is present, with entities such as the Barcelona Metropolitan Transport Authority having a relatively limited decision-making capacity within the operation of the network at that time. Said core is made up of a vast suburban rail network which, in the case of the lines served by Renfe, mainly serves the Catalan capital and its province, and also extends to some towns in Tarragona and Girona, having been expanded since then. As of January 1, 2010, on the other hand, the transfer to the Generalitat of Catalonia of the full power to manage regular commuter services via RFIG routes within said region became effective, in application of the new Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, which expands the powers of this Community in terms of transport that takes place entirely within its territory, regardless of the owner of the infrastructure. In this way, only ownership of the public transport service was delegated to the autonomous administration in yes for said infrastructure, without transferring the ownership of the infrastructure itself, which did not undergo changes in its cataloging of general interest and today continues to be managed by Adif.

This gave way to the new unified system called Rodalies de Catalunya, which aims to bring together under the same name all commuter lines in the Catalan territory, including those operated by the regional company Ferrocarriles de the Generalitat of Catalonia (FGC). However, it is worth mentioning that, due to Renfe's rights to the commercial use of the Rodalies brand, the commuter networks operated by Renfe and FGC in said autonomous community are only visually integrated as regards to the nomenclature/numbering of its lines, which follow the same system and do not overlap; the full Rodalies de Catalunya brand, however, is currently used only on those lines of the system operated by Renfe, being omitted on those offered by FGC; It is a situation that is expected to continue as long as Renfe Cercanías retains its concession as operator of the service.

Mobile stock

The rolling stock used by Renfe, in its Cercanías division, to offer services of this type, includes the following series:

Series	Nucles where it circulates	Lines in which it circulates	Image
442	Madrid	C-9
446	Bilbao	C-1, C-2, C-3
	Madrid	C-1, C-2, C-5, C-7, C-8, C-10
	Sevilla	C-5
	San Sebastián	C-1
447	Barcelona	R1, R2, R3, R4
	Valencia	C-1, C-2, C-6
	San Sebastián	C-1
	Cantabria	C-1
	Murcia/Alicante	C-3
450/451	Barcelona	R2
	Madrid	C-1, C-2, C-7, C-8, C-10
Civia (463/464/465)	Asturias	C-1, C-2, C-3
	Barcelona	R1, R2, R3, R4, R7, R8
	Cadiz	C-1, C-1a
	Madrid	C-1, C-2, C-3, C-3a, C-4, C-7, C-8, C-10
	Malaga	C-1, C-2
	Sevilla	C-1, C-2, C-4, C-5
	Valencia	C-1, C-2, C-6
	Zaragoza	C-1
592	Valencia	C-3, C-4, C-5
	Murcia/Alicante	C-1, C-2
598	Sevilla	C-3

For the Tarragona network, series 448 and 470 trains are used and for the Girona and Córdoba networks, series 447 trains are used