Celeste often has to pass through Madrid: towards the city, but also towards Rivas or Parla. You do it by public transport, and to make your trips you have to change vehicles: by sections, by metro, by sections by bus, or by intercity, or in Cercanías. To do this, he carries several transport cards in his wallet, which causes him some confusion and wastes time, complicating his travel. This is why this person with an intellectual disability wants to have a single card in their wallet, such as the youth card or the senior card, which will simplify their life.
“Sometimes I have to go out and get another ticket; “We waste a lot of time looking for the card, and knowing which one it is, one or the other,” he explains. At his side, Kiko, in the same situation, agrees: “It happens to me too, I have difficulty distinguishing between the different cards.” Sometimes even Celeste admits that she is lostalthough he always finds someone to lend a hand: “I tell them, ‘Hey, I can’t get the ticket,’ and they do it for me.”
Celeste now has the blue card for municipal buses, a voucher for 10 bus trips in the region – which allows her to go to Fuenlabrada, or La Cabrera –, and a Renfe Cercanías card, which is the one she uses to get there. to Parla. It also has a Renfe gold card, to travel to Toledo, which is tariff zone E of the Community of Madrid. “But this one is out of date; “Now I have to renew it.”
She and Kiko want to have a single transport ticket that makes their travel easier and avoids moments of confusion. “We waste a lot of time looking for the card and clarifying which card it is.” This is why they are asking for a card that “allows us to board buses, the metro and trains throughout Madrid”.
They are supported in this same objective by the Federation of Organizations of People with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities, Plena Inclusion Madrid, which has formally requested from the Community of Madrid a single transport card for people with disabilities over 33 for hundred. There is one now, but it is aimed at people with disabilities over 65%, leaving out many users who need it. According to the organization’s figures, the Community of Madrid has a total of 407,749 people with disabilities. “The single card would benefit from a significant percentage of this figure; “This would be a simple and simplified solution to this problem,” they emphasize.
They recall in Plena Inclusion that “currently, people with mental disabilities who wish to use transport throughout the region must have numerous titles offering unequal benefits: the blue card from Madrid City Hall, valid only for zone A; the Community of Madrid reduced pass, which offers a reduction to people with a disability of more than 65%; and the RENFE Cercanías gold card which, like the regional pass, does not benefit people with a disability of between 33% and 65%.
Obstacles
Such disparity in the cards and in the services they cover generates “a certain confusion for users, and represents an obstacle to the daily travel of disabled people”.
The Plena Inclusion Madrid proposal consists of simplifying all these transport tickets into a single pass, “which allows people with intellectual or developmental disabilities to travel within the Community of Madrid in all available regional transport: EMT buses, Consortium buses, metro, light rail, Cercanías Train, etc. It should have an affordable price, “just like the transport ticket of other groups”, they remind, while insisting that their request aims above all to “promote the accessibility is not an economic measure.
“For people with intellectual disabilities, leaving the house becomes a mess of passes and cards if we have to take more than one means of transport through the towns and villages of Madrid”, highlights the Autonomous Committee of Representatives of Plena Inclusion Madrid. They insist that using public transport to go to work, study or see family or friends “should not be a problem”. Hence the need to have this single card.
The Federation transmitted this proposal to the Minister of Housing, Transport and Infrastructure of the Community of Madrid, Jorge Rodrigo, who, according to the organization, “showed his desire to promote this initiative, within the competences of the Regional Council “. Transport Consortium”. In this sense, sources from the ministry explain that “as promised during a meeting held last July” with the advisor, the Regional Transport Consortium and Madrid City Hall, “work is underway on the unification of maps , to create a single one for Madrid transport, with the exception of the Renfe ticket, since Cercanías is not managed by the Community of Madrid They also recall that the virtual use of the transport ticket has already been announced, this. which will simplify its use.
Plena Inclusion would also support a simplification of the six current fare zones in the region, because “the current distribution draws an overly complex transport map”.
