SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Aug. 2 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Minister of Public Works, Transport and Housing of the Government of the Canary Islands, Sebastián Franquis, has expressed his satisfaction that the State is going to discount up to 50% the vouchers for transporting buses in the Archipelago as part of the measures approved by the Government to deal with the economic consequences of the energy crisis and the war between Ukraine and Russia.
“We value positively that the State has recognized the uniqueness of the Canary Islands and is going to discount 50% of recurring travel tickets or passes for buses, both urban and interurban, since it represents an increase of 20% with respect to the discounts that the State has approved for buses in the rest of the autonomous communities,” said Sebastián Franquis.
The counselor stated that this announcement made this morning by President Sánchez is due to the open negotiations between the autonomous government and the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda and the letter that Franquis himself sent to the minister Raquel Sánchez requesting special treatment for the Canary Islands with the transport of buses, since, lacking trains, it is considered an “essential service” for the islands.
In the aforementioned letter, Franquis valued the importance of the measures approved in Royal Decree-Law 11/2022, which contemplates the reduction of the prices of travel passes for public transport both in buses and trains, and recalled that the special characteristics of the Canary Islands as an insular region, the planning and management of this type of transport is carried out in an integrated manner and with an insular character, guaranteeing its financing through the General State Budgets.
“For this reason, we consider it opportune and convenient at this time to include the Canary Islands in the aforementioned measures, but applied to both urban and metropolitan-intercity public land transport services, which we believe is understandable given the lack of railway infrastructure and our special geographical considerations of fragmentation, ultraperipheral region, etc.”, collects the letter.
In this sense, the counselor believes that it is not comparable to compare the bonuses that the State has announced for rail transport, which is within its own competence, with the subsidies that are going to be given to the autonomous communities and other local entities to make subscriptions cheaper of transport used by users in bus companies that are under regional or municipal jurisdiction. “In the Canary Islands there are no trains, if there were, obviously, they would be free as in the rest of the national territory,” added the counselor.
As the Government of Spain has advanced, with this measure announced today by President Sánchez, the bonus for bus transport in the Canary Islands will be increased from the planned 30% to 50% along the same lines that the State already does in the peninsula for the concessions of the state long-distance bus lines (coaches that connect several autonomous communities).
Thus, a complementary subsidy will be enabled for the transfers approved for all the autonomous communities to increase the discount percentage of the multi-trip tickets and the subscriptions of the Canarian buses between September 1 and December 31, 2022.
