With the start of the new batch for the next four months, Renfe has managed to reduce the irregular use of the free Media Distancia passes, going from 20% registered in 2022 to 2.5% this year. In this way, empty seats on trains are less frequent and travelers have had fewer problems requesting these seats in the month of January.
The irregular use of the passes occurred last year, mainly, when some users formalized a Media Distancia travel pass that they later did not take, which caused some trains to go with unoccupied seats, when there was actually demand from other clientele.
The company assures that the decrease that has been registered this year is due to the measures approved by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, which came into force on December 7, by which the sale and use operations were modified. of tickets, restricting the formalization of trips and the acquisition of season tickets and sanctioning repeated irregular uses, among other actions.
different subscriptions
In the case of conventional Medium Distance rail services, users must purchase a different pass for each origin and destination journey, which will be valid for unlimited trips between the origin and destination requested by the customer, in both directions. Thanks to these measures, Renfe will seize the deposit of 20 euros and will cancel the free subscription to users who, at least on three occasions, have not canceled the reservation of the seat with a minimum of two hours in advance if they are not finally going to travel on the train.
The railway operator will withdraw the season ticket for the line on which irregular use has been detected, and will not issue a new season ticket associated with that holder for any medium-distance origin-destination within a period of 30 days from the cancellation. Before arriving to withdraw the subscription and the deposit, Renfe sends two notices to the holder when it detects that he has not finally traveled.
In parallel to the last measure, Renfe limits the maximum number of journeys that can be formalized by season ticket to four daily roundtrips and it is impossible to formalize two trips in the same direction until triple the scheduled travel time has elapsed.
