The autonomies refuse to take on the deficient bus routes alone while Puente finalizes a new concessions map

The Ministry of Transport has already begun technical work to update the map of concessions for interurban bus lines, to renew the proposal that former minister Raquel Sánchez presented in the last legislature and which was opposed by a good part of the regional governments.. This Monday, those of Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León and the Valencian Community have reiterated their opposition to the autonomies having to take over the deficient routes, even if it is in exchange for economic compensation, in the Ministry's new attempt to update and redistribute the routes.

The bus company employers' association, Confebús, organized this Monday in Congress a conference on the Sustainable Mobility Law that has just arrived in the Chamber to retry the process that was paralyzed last year by the call for general elections.. The rule gives a clear mandate to the Government to update the concession map of bus lines, in a model that does not seem to be in danger for the sake of complete liberalization, according to what representatives of the Ministry of Transport and different parties have pointed out. political groups, as well as regional representatives and Confebús. “If traffic with acceptable profitability ratios is excluded, the system will collapse, because it is designed as a network,” in which companies that have a concession for profitable routes thus make up for the losses of the loss-making ones, warned Jaime Rodríguez, director of an organization of a sector that brings together 2,700 companies and 44,000 vehicles.

“The model that we have implemented makes it easier for the Administration to control the transport situation in the territory at all times and guarantee that the service provided is appropriate for each environment,” said the General Director of Road Transport of the Ministry, Roser Obrer. , on a system that currently offers public transport in all Spanish municipalities with at least 50 inhabitants through a concession system, in which companies compete in tenders to exclusively run routes managed by the State in the case of long distance routes. or communities, in the case of shorter routes.

The problem that all parties recognize is that this map is “obsolete”, with routes that were operated many years ago that currently have almost no passengers, such as the one that connects Ferrol-Algeciras or Madrid-Segovia.. Melgar de Fernamental, for some that have been mentioned this Monday, and that respond more to emigration routes of the last century than to current needs.

In this scenario, former Minister Sánchez tried in 2022 to modernize the concessions map with a first draft that raised a lot of regional commotion, because it proposed that the State preserve only those profitable bus routes and that the communities assume those that were not profitable but that to provide service in their respective territories, in exchange for economic compensation that never materialized, because at the time of elections in Andalusia the Government stopped a process that was also surrounded by fears that stops would also be eliminated in some municipalities. , which the PSOE denies because it defends that it was only a first attempt to reorder the map on the State side without yet defining how the lines would look with routes within provinces or communities.

Ministry-community coordination

Now, the Ministry of Transport is doing the technical work again and, although the basis will be what Minister Sánchez already did, it does not have to maintain all its points, including the most controversial ones.. To avoid rejections ahead of time, in the PSOE they believe that it is best to have a meeting with all the communities to explain well any step that is going to be taken.. “We have the firm will to develop new concession maps in collaboration with the communities. Ours [state] has to provide service to long-distance mobility,” stated the Secretary General of Land Transport, Marta Serrano, who has opted for the result to be that citizens do not have to distinguish whether a line is managed by the Ministry. or the autonomous community. “They cannot perceive that they are different administrations, because they also don't care, they want coordination and for the public service to satisfy their needs.”

Before this moment arrives, this Monday Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León have made it clear in Congress that they do not agree with so sharply separating state and regional management bus lines and even less with the responsibility falling on the communities. most deficient, particularly in two communities with serious depopulation problems in which the existence of the bus is an element of population fixation. Both regional governments provide them anyway to the inhabitants of even the smallest towns, in many cases with on-demand services or integrating them, for example, with school routes.

In addition, they have demanded that the Sustainable Mobility Law also contemplates financing for interurban transport by bus and not only urban transport.. What is not contemplated in this area, Castilla-La Mancha would require it via regional financing, its General Director of Transport, Rubén Sobrino, has warned. According to him, in such depopulated areas the intercity bus is the “fourth pillar” of the welfare state, which allows citizens to go to the doctor, to study or to exercise their “right to work.”. “It is not worth it that we have a very profitable system in one part and a very deficient system in another,” said Sobrino, who believes that the Government and communities still have “a lot to work on” to avoid “situations such as that in the new concessions map the lines state have stops only in places with a lot of demand and others that stop in all the towns, that are deficient and that we have to assume the responsibility of the communities.

“If it were from an economic perspective, we would practically stop providing all the bus lines in our community,” stated the general director of Transport of Castilla y León, Laura Paredes, who indicated that in 2023 the Board will invest 32 million to finance intercity bus transport, 38 million in 2022 and 40 in 2023. “If we continue to invest in transportation, it is necessary to provide it with sufficient financing.”

What Castilla y León expects from the Sustainable Mobility Law is that “it takes into account rural mobility and that all territories and population have the right to it, that there is a coordinated demand from the state and regional lines so that they do not stop provide services” and “financing for all types of transportation”, not only for urban transportation, but also for rural and interurban transportation.

For its part, this Monday's day has made it clear that the need to be able to finance bus lines that hardly take people but that is necessary for towns and municipalities is not only in communities 'officially' affected by depopulation.. Also in the Valencian Community, one of the most populated in Spain, but with areas where the buses are not full and if only a profitability criterion were applied, they would have to stop operating.. “We have extraordinary conditions on paper,” said its General Director of Transport, Manuel Ríos, in a Community that concentrates 90% of the population in half of the territory.. The other half “is empty” and must use on-demand transportation, which with the current concessions map requires an investment of 50 million by the Generalitat.