Prohibitive cost of public transport

I   wanted to write this post for a long time. At year end, you can read in the newspapers or listen on the radio that Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB), the authority in terms of public transport, is getting ready to increase the prices of the different travel cards.

When 2013 was finishing, they said that they were thinking of increasing the single ticket and the T-10 (a travel card with ten journeys), because these two are the ones most popular amongst tourists. Certainly, who made this sentence has never caught the bus or the underground, because there are thousands of Barcelona citizens that use one of them.

However, finally, they decided to increase the price for all travel cards, which means a lot of money when you think about it: in our case, my wife has to pay three Euros more every 30 days that means about 36 per year. My sister, who has a ticket of two zones,   double the cost and a cousin of my wife who has to travel three zones has to pay nine Euros every month, which means180 Euros extra per annum.

During last year, and thinking in back cutting my expenses, I decided to go to work by metro to save some costs. At the beginning I thought it was worth it, but now, after doing some calculations, I have realised that I spent the same amount of money if I travel by car or by Metro. Conclusion: I will go to work by car as it takes me about forty minutes less to go and return home.

I honestly think this IS a great mistake of TMB and the council. With these prices the only thing they are going to achieve is that Barcelona citizens travel more by car or motorbike instead of using the public transport, that is supposed to be better in many ways for the city, the atmosphere and the pollution.

I am very disappointed with all the increases we have suffered and I have decided to join any campaign to show our disagreement with this decision. On the Internet I have seen groups that are thinking of doing actions and the other day they gave me a flyer criticizing the local government.

Public transport, as it says, should be for everybody. Every Barcelona citizen should be able to afford a travel card without a problem, but now it has become a service for rich people, who, in the other hand, never use it. It is terrible, because nowadays families have a lot of expenses and they shouldn’t be forced to pay this amount of money for a service that should be public.