The Minister of Transport and Infrastructure of the Community of Madrid, David Pérez, has criticized this Saturday the decision of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to approve a package of reductions for public transport, and has denounced that the fund approved for the rates invades regional powers and has not been agreed with them.
Pérez has described that the approved measure is “temporary, a patch, which does not serve to try to stop the escalation of prices from its root”. Likewise, he added that they are measures that “will not serve to control this escalation” or to “alleviate the situation of the economy of Spanish families.”
From the regional government they believe that the reduction of the approved rates by 50% would mean that the autonomous communities will have to increase taxes in order to finance that reduction. The counselor recalled that Madrid’s public transport is “strongly subsidized” in full by the Community of Madrid by “more than 60%” and that users “barely paid 40% in 2019, and 30% in 2021 average cost of the service.
“It was born without dialogue and without financial guarantees”
David Pérez has assured that what was approved by the Government “was born without dialogue or financial guarantees” and is aimed at “conditioning” all the administrations that provide the transport service so that their rates “are reduced regardless of any professional, budgetary criteria or rational.
In this sense, it has criticized that the Government has not requested any type of data or criteria that could serve as a basis for the adoption of the approved measure, in addition to the, according to them, “missed opportunity” by the minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda of Spain, Raquel Sánchez, to convene for the first time the transport sector where “the measure could have been proposed”.
Also, Pérez has criticized that these measures can “directly” affect users who have annual subscriptions that have already “been paid”, or by the exclusion of simple or single-use travel tickets, that in some service providers “they are very important”. “It is already good that they make announcements and propaganda and then the one who ends up paying is the autonomous communities, we demand seriousness, loyalty, dialogue and the necessary funds to apply any measure that affects all the finances of the autonomous communities”, he added.
From the Autonomous Executive they are committed to the creation of social bonds or bonuses taking into account the income of citizens and applying not only to public transport fares but in general. In addition to the fact that the “lowering” of public transport is a “very partial” measure to encourage its use.
Among the new measures announced by Sánchez to alleviate the effects on Spaniards due to the War in Ukraine, and in order to encourage the use of public transport, there is a 50% reduction from September 1 on the price of all monthly subscriptions and any type of subscription for state transport companies, such as Renfe, and 30% for subscriptions for modes of transport that depend on municipalities and autonomous communities, a discount that can be extended with their own resources up to 50%.
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