France's railway system admitted Wednesday that it made a costly blunder by ordering new trains that turned out to be too wide for the stations.
The state-run railway operator Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer said that the 2,000 trains it ordered for the nation's expanding railway network don't fit 1,300 of France's 8,700 stations, France 24 reported.
The trains were bought from Alstom and Bombardeir for $15 billion euros, or $20 billion, The Independent reported.
"We discovered the problem a bit late," Christophe Piednoel, spokesman for national railway owner Réseau Ferré de France, said to a French radio station. "It's as if you bought a Ferrari and when you come to park it in your garage you realize your garage isn't exactly the right size for a Ferrari because you didn't have a Ferrari before."
SNCF and RFF said it will need to widen the 1,300 stations to accommodate the larger trains. The construction is expected to cost nearly 50 million euros, or $68.5 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. The alterations will need to be completed by the time the trains are delivered in 2016.
The mistake was realized when RFF calculated incompatible platform dimensions to SNCF, which was in charge of ordering the trains, according to Franc 24.
Critics say the mistake highlights the inability of RFF and SNCF to function ever since the two agencies were separated by the previous administration in 1997.
Environment and Energy Minister Segolene Royal said she wants to know how "such a stupid decision had been made," according to the WSJ.
"Such implausible errors simply go to show there are people in Parisian offices who are too far removed from the regional reality," Royal said.
RFF President Jacques Rappoport said the agency has done a lot in the past decade to improve the railway system, including increasing railway traffic by 50 percent on 150-year-old platforms.
"It's clear that the trains we had in the 19th century aren't the same ones we have today," Rappoport said according to the WSJ.
