A scheme allowing free travel on suburban and middle-distance trains has begun in Spain, the latest in a series of European public transport initiatives intended to address increasing fuel costs.
German rail fares returned to normal on Thursday after a three-month experiment with €9 (£7.75) tickets for a month’s unlimited travel on local and regional public transport networks.
Although Spain’s scheme, which runs until 31 December, is designed to help commuters cope with inflation, it will also, like Germany’s, benefit leisure travellers.
Passengers can obtain a rail pass via the national rail network Renfe’s app or at railway stations. They must nominate a destination and pay a deposit of €10 for suburban lines and €20 for middle-distance journeys, after which a QR code on the application will serve as a ticket.
The deposit will be refunded at the end of the year if the ticket holder has travelled at least 16 times to the specified destination.
The ticket applies to all destinations in the same zone as the specified station. In the case of Madrid or Barcelona, for example, it means free travel within a radius of about 30 miles (50km) of the city.
Visitors to Spain can sign up using their passport number, and for those using a city as a base to explore the surrounding area there are significant benefits. For example, a return ticket from Madrid to nearby Aranjuez costs €12.50, and to El Escorial, €8.10. Even by forfeiting the €10 deposit, there is a saving of €10.60 on just these two visits.
However, the real beneficiaries are commuters. “By the end of the year I will have saved €300 on my journey,” said Santiago Muñoz, who commutes from Barcelona to Sitges.
At the same time, metro fares in Barcelona have been reduced by up to 50%, also until 31 December. A 10-trip, multi-use bus and metro ticket that covers most of the city will cost €7.95.
In a further move to ease the impact of rising costs, the government has announced it will cut VAT on fuel bills from 21% to 5%, at least until the end of the year.
The German scheme has been credited with saving about 1.8m tonnes of CO2 emissions by encouraging people out of their cars and on to public transport.
Germany’s transport minister, Volker Wissing, has said he hopes to find a successor to the €9 ticket. “We know that we have triggered an enthusiasm for public transport that has probably never existed in Germany before,” he said.
Between 1 June and 31 August, 52m tickets were sold, a fifth of them to people who claimed to have never used public transport before. Publicity resulting from the ticket greatly exceeded that related to a subsidy on car fuel during the same period, which also ended on Wednesday. As well as the low cost, people praised the simplicity of the ticket, which cut through swathes of complicated tariffs that differ from region to region. Opponents criticised overcrowding and the fact the ticket did little to benefit those in rural areas who are far less well served by public transport.
