The President of the Regional Government of Andalusia, Juanma Moreno, stated today that the Youth Transport Card responds to a historical demand, while stressing that its main objectives are to promote the mobility of young people on all means of public transport in the nine metropolitan areas of Andalusia and to promote sustainable transport.
During the presentation ceremony for this card, which was also attended by the Regional Minister for Development, Infrastructures and Territorial Planning, Marifrán Carazo, and which took place at the San Bernardo Metro Station in Seville, Moreno stated that the aim of this card is to win the loyalty of young people and recover lost confidence in the demand for public transport, which fell by up to 95% in the first months of the pandemic. He pointed out that it could be used to capture more than a third of the volume of passengers, which is equivalent to more than 25 million journeys.
The Andalusian president explained that this card is aimed at all young people under 30 years of age living in the Andalusian region and will mean a financial saving of 50% for a single ticket and up to 100% for young people from large families. This initiative has an investment of 5.3 million euros and could benefit nearly three million young people.
“A saving that young people will notice when they have to travel every day to schools, universities or workplaces. This includes journeys between towns in the same metropolitan area. Interoperability is also guaranteed, so that the card of one consortium can also be used in the other consortia”, he added.
In this sense, he detailed that young people will benefit from this discount on metropolitan and urban buses, Bay of Cadiz catamarans, metros, trams and work is being done to include suburban and medium-distance trains as well.
Moreno stressed that an agreement with Renfe will be signed in March and that it is planned that the first phase will allow the youth card to be used on suburban services in Cadiz, coinciding with the start-up of the Bay of Cadiz tramway, and then it will be extended to the suburban services in Malaga and Seville.
In this way, he pointed out that in the first few days more than 16,000 applications for this card have been registered, while he also stated that its use is personal and non-transferable and that a recharge bonus is applied so that it has a greater available balance. “In the case of young people from large families, the card to be issued is the large family card, to which a double discount will be applied”.
“The aim is to improve our public transport network and its quality by making it more efficient, more agile and simpler, and which does not entail extra costs for the most vulnerable people in economic terms,” he concluded.