The subway vehicles that have been sealed for 8 years and whose maintenance costs have exceeded 700

ARTS Rail Transit learned that the Buenos Aires Municipality has so far spent more than 700 million pesos on storage costs for the storage of decommissioned trains on Line B. The trains have been stored in rented warehouses since they were discontinued eight years ago.

This batch of trains is the CAF 5000 type, which is a second-hand train used by the Madrid metro in Spain in the 70s of the last century. They were purchased by the Bu City Metro Company (SBASE) in the early 2010s for B line operations. However, after several years of service, it was forced to retire due to frequent breakdowns and problems with asbestos-containing parts and has now been parked for longer than it has been in service.

The cost of sealing is high and costs more than 27 million pesos per month

According to official documents, from 2018 to the present, the storage costs of 36 CAF 5000 trains have accumulated 709,143,161 pesos.
Of these, 162 million pesos were spent on storage in the Magaldi garage in Barracas, while in the Corrales garage in Pompeya it cost up to 547 million pesos.
It is worth noting that neither garage is SBASE's own property, but rather a leased space from a company owned by the Argentine media group Clarín Group.

In 2025 alone, the cost of storage of CAF 5,000 trains in the Corrales garage – "about 34% of the total parked vehicles in the depot" – will exceed 27 million pesos per month, the report said.
In addition, warehouses are not connected to the subway network, and vehicles need to be transported in and out by flatbeds, further increasing expenses.

The operation was short-lived, and failures were frequent, and finally all were decommissioned

The CAF 5000 train entered service on line B in 2013, but had problems in the early stages of operation. Since 2016, most vehicles have been suspended due to frequent technical failures.
By the time it was fully retired in February 2018, only half of the vehicles were still operational. The direct reason for the suspension was that the train was detected to contain asbestos, a cancerous substance.
Since then, all these trains have been sealed and have become a continuous financial burden for the Bushi Metro management department. Because it involves lawsuits, it cannot be scrapped.

Comprehensive replacement: CRRC trains will replace old cars

According to the latest plan, all vehicles on Line B – including CAF 5000, CAF 6000 and existing Mitsubishi trains – will be replaced by new trains manufactured by CRRC. This marks that the Bushi Metro is expected to completely bid farewell to the era of second-hand trains and get rid of the shadow of the previous controversial procurement of old cars.

The story of CAF 5000, from being introduced overseas as an "economical procurement" to becoming synonymous with judicial cases, financial burdens and safety hazards, reflects the pain and reflection of the Buenos Aires metro system in the process of modernization. Now, with the upcoming launch of CRRC's new trains, Line B may usher in a true "rebirth".

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