Madrid is a city supported by public transport. According to the statistics of 2019, 59% of the people of Madrid travel by public transport or on foot, and the further into the city center, the lower the proportion of car use, the higher the proportion of public transport use.
This is almost unimaginable in any other big city in the world.
Madrid’s subway network can be described as dense, after all, it also has a history of more than 100 years of construction. Really let us understand what a solid foundation is and what a veteran capitalist country is.
How convenient is public transportation in Madrid? Those who have stayed in Madrid must have an experience: no matter where you live, basically there are bus stops under the building. The spacious and bright buses can take you ten or twenty minutes when you are indulged in sunlight and architecture. Delivered to the city center for hot pot.
Madrid’s buses’ main characteristics are power, big Windows, too many old people. Especially those cross-district buses, open up and fast and stable, is simply to make the strength of the endless.
Madrid’s subway is one of the reasons why many people fall in love with Madrid. The advanced technology of the subway allows the residents of Barcelona to know what is the capital and what is the infrastructure madman. Most of the time, you only need to walk a few hundred meters to get to the subway station downstairs.
When you are in the city center, you can even pass the platform of this subway station, look through a two-hundred-meter tunnel, and see the lights of the next subway station. When I told my friends this kind of remarks in our country, they all felt that I was bragging.
Therefore, the Madrid Metro has become the most important part of the life of international students in Madrid. Basically, the vast majority of international students travel by subway. Compared to the United States, Canada, and Australia without a car, it is difficult to go anywhere. Madrid has a subway downstairs, which saves a lot of money indeed. Many students do not know the name of the route to Madrid, but which line can get to where, how to transfer to where, even several years after returning to China, they are still fresh in their memory.
Not only for the Chinese, but also for the people of Madrid, so the winner in the selection of La Voz de Madrid was the sentence: al salir, tengan ciudado para no introducir el pie entre coche y anden.
In fact, the main thing I want to talk about today is this monthly pass for Madrid.
The monthly pass was invented 35 years ago, and this has become the choice of the vast majority of Madrid people. Eight out of ten people use the monthly pass to ride the bus.
This monthly pass can not only take the subway but also take the intercity bus. The intercity here refers to the beautiful small cities of Madrid, such as Aranjuez. You can even go to Toledo and other places across the provinces. Of course, this monthly pass can also take the bus. car.
In the beginning, the monthly pass looked like this.
About ten years ago, Area A, which is mainly the urban area, became a red transportation card. But in other places, this kind of monthly pass is still needed, but I used to use the monthly pass for the C1 area for one year when I was studying abroad.
Obviously, this kind of monthly ticket has disappeared now, so when I sent it to my friends, everyone said in unison: What is this?
Where can we buy this monthly ticket? It’s a small pavilion where you can sell cigarettes, which is called estanco in Spanish, to buy, and sometimes it’s out of stock.
What if I lose it? Sorry, if you lose it, you can only do it again, so in your hand, this is a valuable check, who knows who uses it!
Every time you get on the bus, you have to insert this ticket into the machine and then take it out. In order to protect it from wear, there is also a plastic clip that can be inserted in and is not easy to lose.
If this ticket is too worn out and can’t be scanned, I think it should be replaced with a new one, but if you lose it, there is no way, you can only buy it again.
Now everyone doesn’t need to worry about this, because all places use transportation cards, and this kind of ticket can also be regarded as a museum in Madrid.
Although I used the transportation card, the price is still very strange. I lived in a small town north of Madrid in 2015. You would definitely not know this small town. It’s called El Molar. This place is always in the news because Murder will only happen, it’s such a small town.
The most recent news was on March 9 this year. A man in our town killed his 47-year-old wife and 11-year-old daughter.
Here we are, in C1.
Driving license C1 is difficult, DELE C1 is also difficult, our C1 is also very difficult!
What is the concept of C1? It’s about an hour’s drive north from Plaza de Castilla.
The price in the C1 area is about 91 Euros. I remember it very clearly because it costs so much money every month. For me at the time, it was really painful.
And just in June 2015, the new governor of Madrid, Cristina Cifuentes, announced that it would raise the age of the youth card from 23 to 26. That year, I was 25 years old. If she takes office earlier, I can save 700 euros more a year, and then I can buy another local tycoon of the hottest iPhone 5s at the time, and let the gypsy brother steal me again.
Not only that, but Cristina also announced that the youth card can cost 20 euros a month, regardless of the region, all 20 euros! Don’t talk about C1, it’s okay to sit in Zone E.
Raising the youth card from 23 to 26 was an important measure Cristina made at the time for the general election. The main purpose was to attract young people because these three-year-olds contained nearly 2.5 million young users.
Before this policy, the fares of Kasan and Mazuo students were more expensive than those of CommScope.
As for the classmates of the University of Alcala, the monthly pass is really a huge expense, and now, the classmates of the three schools are the same as those in the city of CommScope, which are all 20 Euros.
Therefore, although Cristina said that her academic qualifications were fraudulent and a lot of scandals broke out, she insisted on not resigning until she was finally found to have stolen two bottles of cream in the supermarket and announced that she had to dismiss classes on the same day.
Without her, everyone would not be able to enjoy low prices after the age of 23. This is also the most important political legacy that Cristina left us.
The picture below shows her being caught stealing cream. At the time, she was already a senior official in Madrid and was in charge of the police. I really don’t understand why she did it. Until recently, everyone said that she never checked out when she went to the supermarket. . .
It’s a long way off. On the other hand, this fare policy also means that when a young man reaches 27 years old, if he lives in C1, the price of his monthly pass will suddenly soar from 20 to 91 Euros. This It’s really something that ordinary people can’t bear psychologically.
What is cooler than young people is the elderly. They only need 6 euros. You are not mistaken. They only need the price of a llaollao, and you can sit for a month. You can sit as far as Toledo and Guadalajara. Pull, you say scary is not scary.
In the general election some time ago, various political parties began to make a fuss about this matter again. The most radical is Podemos. They said they would abolish all regional fares and change them to a unified 30 Euro. If this is the case, it means that the actual revenue of the Madrid transportation system will be reduced by 30%, and this part Where does the income come from? It can only be paid out of government expenditures. After all, in the current Madrid transportation system, in addition to the money earned from ticket sales, the government has to pay for the rest. But the government has so much money. Where do you find this 360 million euro deficit? Podemos don’t care, after all, their election slogans never care about what to do if there is no money.
Now based on the current voting situation, Ayuso will be re-elected at 99.9%, and her votes are far ahead. Ayuso’s attitude on this matter is: you can consider changing all under 30 years old to 30 euros. Note that, Can be considered, but did not say for certain.
But I still hope that Ayuso can raise his age to 30 years old. The subway fare is closely related to every young person. After all, the money saved to eat steak is not fragrant?
In fact, from the reason that young Spanish people like public transportation, it can be seen that the monthly pass is the same as the various cards we use now. It facilitates the travel of each of us. If you need a card, you can contact us.