Railways in Buenos Aires: Not driving but sleeping EVER since a Buenos Aires commuter train slammed into a station wall in February 2012, killing 51 people and injuring more than 700, the Argentine government has scrambled to improve the city's railway system. It replaced the transport minister, stripped Trenes Buenos Aires (TBA), the operator of the crashed train, of its concessions and promised passengers it would bring in shiny new trains from China, some of which have already arrived. Still, many people complain that the railways have got no better. Train journeys in and out of Buenos Aires are still uncomfortable and dangerous, with overstuffed, filthy, poorly maintained trains that often leave and arrive late. "People still travel badly," admitted the new transport minister, Florencio Randazzo, in a recent radio interview - which is why, he explained, the national government has decided that over the next three months it will centralise control of the city's railways under the State Railway Operating Corporation (SOFSE), a state body which already controls a number of railway lines. The government has already nationalised five of the capital's seven commuter railways. This was not entirely unexpected; it had already expropriated two Brazilian-run cargo railways for alleged underinvestment. Nor is it likely to bring fundamental reforms: the lines in question, though operated since 1995 by private consortia, were owned and almost fully financed by government subsidy. But the change suggests the government has at last come to recognise how precarious the Buenos Aires rail network is. Under the old system, the government demanded nothing much of the operating companies except that they keep the cost of travel low, the better to win the votes of the nearly 1m commuters who ride the city's metropolitan railways every day. After Argentina's financial crisis in 2001 the government froze ticket prices, and it has allowed them to rise only slightly since. The subsidy is now ten times the basic one-peso ticket price. This system naturally led to corruption and neglect. To begin with, train employees have stopped collecting fares. La Nación , one of the country's leading newspapers, recently estimated that only six in every 100 metropolitan rail passengers have a valid ticket. Workers have also been caught sleeping or reading books while ostensibly operating passenger trains. Instead of cracking down on such behaviour, or investing in the service, the transport companies have simply ingratiated themselves with government officials. "For the train companies, the government was a far more important client than its passengers," says Lucio Castro, who studies transport at CIPPEC, a Buenos Aires think-tank. Claudio Cirigliano - whose family company, Cometrans, controlled TBA - has been accused of paying for the Brazilian holidays of the previous transport minister, Ricardo Jaime, as a tacit thank you for the millions of dollars in subsidies TBA has received from the state. A judicial investigation also found that Mr Cirigliano had bought costly Polynesian furniture and thousands of dollars" worth of jewellery with a corporate credit card. According to Gerardo Otero, the under-secretary of administrative management and transport, the government will henceforth assume more control over the spending of subsidies and other administrative matters. Mr Otero also suggests that, at some point, SOFSE may try its hand at operating the railways directly. If past experience is any guide, though, that would be a mixed blessing. More government investment would be good; more control may not be. Since Cristina Fernández, Argentina's president, expropriated the country's flagship airline, Aerolíneas Argentinas, in 2008, it has haemorrhaged over $3.5 billion of taxpayers" money. Fear of Ms Fernández's volatility has also prevented YPF, the oil firm she seized in 2012 from Spain's Repsol, from attracting many partners, plunging the country deeper into energy deficit. As Mr Castro points out: "The government is not a capable administrator. Unless the underlying problem of perverse incentives is fixed, things will probably get worse, not better.