The Government rectifies and expands discounts to alleviate the grievances of regional train passengers.

BarcelonaChange in rail transport discounts, which will no longer be free in July. The Regional Minister for Territory, Sílvia Paneque, rectified this and announced changes this Wednesday in the Government's control session. Paneque confirmed that the discounts for regional trains will be increased from the initially planned 40% to 60% starting in July. The Minister stated this in a response to ERC and clarified that this will correct the Comparative "grievance" between users of regional trains and commuter trains.

Thus, once the free service ends, users of Commuter trains will pay the 20 euros provided for the flat rate. state-run rail, while regional rail subscribers will see the fare gap associated with changing from one service to another narrow. As initially announced, regional rail passengers had to pay up to five times more for a journey that sometimes only meant a 10-minute extra train ride. This situation sparked outrage among some Renfe user groups, such as Dignidad en las Vías and Promoción del Transporte Público (PTP), who openly demanded changes to the pricing system. Complaints intensified, especially in southern Catalonia, among users who had suffered from the corridor works, particularly in Roda de Berà.

"We are addressing this demand," Paneque emphasized, adding that "it is fair." "We will achieve a 60 percent discount so that, starting July 1, there will be no such comparative grievance," she said, explaining that there will be a "reduction of up to 33 percent in the ticket price that would have been in place" had this move not been made. Likewise, the Minister of Territory defended "a fair and equitable fare model, adapted to the territorial reality," after the end of the free service that began in September 2022, at the height of the inflationary surge, a few months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Paneque insisted that the free service was "exceptional" and "derived" from the war, despite successive extensions until the measure expires this summer.

However, Paneque's announcement came after complaints in the plenary session from the ERC spokesperson in the Parliament, Ester Capella, who had denounced the discount policy as "unequal" and "highly disproportionate" for passengers who live further from Barcelona. In her opinion, it was a "territorial toll" for a "poor service" like the one provided by Renfe.

"Insufficient" correction

The user associations and platforms that had protested the price difference between commuter and regional train passengers welcome the Catalan government's correction but consider it "insufficient." "We'll go from paying 92 euros to travel from Barcelona to Tarragona or Altafulla to paying 60. Is it better? Yes, but it's still three times more than what a Barcelona commuter pays in San Vicente de Calders," laments Anna Gómez, spokesperson for the Dignity on the Roads platform, who adds: "And on top of that, the service isn't working well."

"The underlying problem is that the logic behind pricing is state-based, with distinct commuter and medium-distance hubs, and this logic doesn't fit the Catalan system," argues Adrià Ramírez, president of the PTP. "Here, the commuter and regional train traffic is very similar: there are a lot of people from Tarragona who commute to Barcelona every day, for example," explains Ramírez, who believes the change is "a step in the right direction" but agrees that it's not enough: "What we would ask is for Renfe to stop issuing its own season tickets and implement a tailored policy," he concludes.

Dignidad a las Vías also highlights the "blatant lack of transparency and information" for users throughout the fare-deciding process. "We've known for months that they'll change, and they haven't been published anywhere: users have the right to easily calculate what their ticket will cost starting in July," notes Gómez.