Joan Carles Salmerón: "The bus is covering all the Rodalies problems very well"

Barcelona"Public transport should be considered an essential service, just like education or healthcare". This is one of the maxims of Joan Carles Salmerón, the director of the Centre d'Estudis del Transport Términus and one of the mobility experts in Catalonia. This week he presented the book The bus and coach in Catalonia, the first publication that collects the entire history of the sector. All in all, at a time when buses have taken over from Rodalies, which is still struggling to recover from the crisis that began in January, after the fatal accident in Gelida.

Has there been any other moment in history when the bus has had to come to the rescue of the railway?

— No, what is happening is unprecedented. And we hope it is a temporary situation: Rodalies must recover, but for the moment the bus sector has taken a step forward and is demonstrating great adaptability. They have gone to look for vehicles in Mallorca, Murcia, Galicia, also drivers... and they have managed to maintain the service. For now, the bus is covering all the problems that Rodalies has brought with a very good grade.

And what happens if Rodalies does not recover in the short term? Will buses be able to withstand this pressure?

— It would be a bad scenario, but for society as a whole, because the mobility system is one; we should not separate the bus network from the railway network. We cannot afford to consider, as a society, that in two or three years, all this, including some major works, will not be resolved. It would not be sustainable in economic, social, or environmental terms. The current situation is exceptional.

In his book, he reviews, region by region, how the sector has evolved. What are the key historical moments?

— Everything appears with the turn of the century, at the beginning of the 20th century. There is a double phenomenon: throughout Europe the first buses begin to appear, which are an evolution of carriages; and in Catalonia, furthermore, the road network begins to grow. The most paradigmatic case is that public transport manages to reach the Pyrenees. Between 1924 and 1926 the first concessions are created. It is legislated that for a specific line there will be no competition, a company is chosen, timetables are created... Because until then it was a sin Dios; entrepreneurs argued, they rushed to pick up passengers from the stop, one before the other, there were no defined prices, nor timetables.

It is when it really begins to be understood as a public service...

— Clear regulations begin to emerge, yes. And we have documented in the book that there was almost a bus company in every important town. In the 50s and 60s there was a big boom in tourism and the roads were flooded with the famous Pegaso, with more modern buses. And from the 80s and 90s onwards, and especially from the 2000s, with the turn of the century, the large business groups we recognize today began to be created: Moventis, Sagalés, Plana, Hife, Avanza, Alsa, and Monbús. And there are also about a hundred companies that provide discretionary transport: school, medical... The main one is Avangrup. There are also tourism ones.

Precisely at the turn of the century, in 2003, the first major extension of these concessions, which is still in force, was made.

— Yes, they are the same from the 20s and 50s that have been renovated and modernized. In fact, at that time they were required to make a total change of services, the image was unified... It represented a big change because the administration forced the renewal of all fleets and the adaptation of vehicles to wheelchairs, for example, and the improvement of information.

And beyond the story of number 47 in Barcelona, which we all know now, what other historical anecdote would you highlight?

— I would choose three. I was very surprised to discover that as early as 1920 there were already electric buses covering the Girona-Banyoles route. They were charged at night, at the mill in Banyoles, but they didn't last long. Also that the current prefix hispano, which some companies still maintain, is because the first vehicle they had was a Hispano Suiza and the company offered them very favorable conditions if they put the name on it. And I was also surprised to learn that in the 1960s there was already a woman at the head of one of the large companies in the sector, La Plana, in such a male-dominated world. She led even before the first female drivers entered the sector. And yet another anecdote: we have managed to collect many images of towns that held a great celebration, with welcome signs and all the neighbors in the street, when the first bus line finally arrived. They were really saluting progress.

And the future of the sector, where is it going?

— The administration must face the fact that the bus network will play a very important role in the coming years. Even if we take for granted that the chaos of Rodalies (commuter trains) must be solved, a metropolis of 5 million inhabitants is being created and we are heading towards Catalonia of 10 million inhabitants. A rapid public transport system will be needed... We have just inaugurated the second bus-HOV lane, 15 years after the first one. Hybrid buses will be needed everywhere, better applications to offer unified information, comfortable, sustainable buses... Furthermore, new technologies will help us in the fourth great change for buses, with more efficient and safer driving systems or with vehicles with better traction.

One of the things that still needs to be tidied up are all the scattered stops used by interurban buses in Barcelona, for example, and the lack of stations, the model in short.

— It applies to Barcelona and the rest of the counties too. Here there are several important things. The first is that buses must arrive at places in conditions: a place where a driver can be replaced, where one can go to the toilet, where one can rest or unload if you are carrying luggage. It is unacceptable that to this day there are lines that end on a damn sidewalk in Barcelona. We need stations in conditions at least at Diagonal, Gran Via and Meridiana. In this sense, Madrid is a good example, with a bus station at each access to the city. In addition, there are still many stops lost in the middle of nowhere, where the teams themselves have been saying for years that they don't pick anyone up. Please, let's eliminate them! These are things that don't require waiting until 2028, they should have been done already.