While analyzing the possibilities the country has for administration of the train service, the president of Costa Rica, Luis Guillermo Solís, admitted that currently the operation “doesn’t seem to be very efficient”.
The president pointed out that in the past there was a government in control whose work on the train service wasn’t very good. A similar situation is occuring currently, due to the fact that there are lots of subcontracted services, making it difficult to find the best way to improve the quality of the trains for users.
The president avoided saying directly whether or not The Costa Rican Railroad Institute (INCOFER in Spanish) would contract a mediator to improve the service. The president took into account that there have been incidents, like the engineer’s strike which stopped service this past Tuesday, that caused some of the aforementioned problems.
Solís added that the way to administrate train operations should depend on the context of each country and should be tried out in a variety of different ways.
When asked about the engineer’s protest this past Tuesday which left 14 passengers who use the train without a method of transportation, Solís showed satisfaction for the mediation that INCOFER carried out so that they could come to an agreement with the company Catenaria and the engineers.
The strike came to an end when the company agreed to take a look at the raises that the engineers and train operators were asking for.
This Wednesday, one of the leaders of INCOFER, Cristian Vargas, traveled on the railway in order to overlook the restart of operations.