A year ago, the Greenpeace organization launched the idea of introducing a single flat-rate subscription to use the country’s public transport system. The plan is to increase collective travel, reduce car use and thus reduce CO2 emissions. A climate ticket. It was not a rabbit pulled out of the hat since this title works in Germany or Austria.
“There is strong social support for the creation of the single pass,” the organization now adds. It relies on a survey commissioned in Spain to investigate the initiative: 75% of the population, according to its results, considers this type of single ticket useful for getting on buses, subways, trams or trains in any city with a single price. It would also mean an increase in the use of public transport of between 50 and 30%.
The work, carried out through 2,005 interviews with “representative distribution of the population, autonomous community, gender and age”, concludes that three quarters of the population understand that such a measure would contribute to “reducing dependence on private vehicles” and improving daily mobility. . today.
The communities where, according to the responses, a single pass is considered most useful are the Canary Islands, Andalusia, Galicia and Madrid.
Having a monthly plan is therefore interesting. But at what price? The survey reveals that a price between 30 and 49 euros is considered affordable. “85% of respondents support the transition from current discounts to a single subscription system,” adds the work presented this Thursday by Greenpeace.
“The current discounts have been a good pilot experience that has worked, we see how the number of people using public transport and regular travellers continues to grow,” comments the organisation’s mobility coordinator, Cristina Arjona.
In fact, 40% of respondents are using public transport more because of the cuts. If these subsidies were to decrease, a third would travel less, they say, but another third admit that they would use their private car more. “Now we need to go further and take measures to make public transport sustainably affordable.”
The experiment in Germany was launched in May 2023. It is called Deutschland-Ticket and costs exactly 49 euros. Greenpeace itself in Germany is now advocating lowering the price to 29 euros. At present, travel is shifting from private cars to public transport.
When evaluating such a project, a study commissioned by the German executive concluded that 10% of the journeys made replaced a journey that would otherwise have been made by car. The report calculates the avoided emissions taking into account the journeys transferred from the car to buses and trains at 1.8 million tonnes of CO2. “Three months on a nine-euro bill saves about the same amount of CO2 as one year of speed limits on the motorway,” explains the Association of Transport Companies.
In Austria, there has been a direct so-called Klimaticket since 2021. It is more expensive and costs 91 euros per month if paid as an annuity.
