Madrid to make public transport free during morning peak hours

Madrid has unveiled plans to support public transport from September 2021. The new measures include free public transport in the morning peak hours in the first half of September and new integrated tickets to support multimodality.

As the pandemic recovery gets underway, Madrid is taking dramatic steps to reduce private vehicle use on its roads. Private car use is rising at a far quicker rate than public transport.

Public transport use has risen by 10%, going from 64% on 1 June to 74% on 27 June. Nonetheless, maintaining this momentum requires concerted action.

To achieve this, EMT Madrid, the city's transport operator, :

• Make travel free during the first half of September on any of the daytime lines, except the Airport Express from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m;
• Create the 'transbus', a new ticket that will allow transfers on buses for one hour for a price of 1.80 euro compared to the 1.50 euro that the single title costs;
• Add 15km of (temporary) bus lanes;
• Launch 3 new bus lines connecting outer districts among them and with Park & Ride facilities.

Madrid will also be improving active travel and micromobility infrastructure. 230 new park forks/scooters with the capacity to park 460 bicycles in 46 new locations will be installed.

The BiciMAD scheme (an electric bike share) will be extended to all districts of the city. The network currently reaches 15 districts, with 258 stations and 3,400 bicycles available to users.

The plans were announced by the Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and are in line with the city's agenda for intermodal and sustainable urban mobility.

Find out more here (in Spanish).