Three years after that month of March 2020 in which the wagons circulated completely empty, the Barcelona metro and the rest of the rail options in Catalonia have recovered pre-pandemic passenger levels and have even exceeded them, reaching record numbers.
Until now, there had been spikes in demand on the metro in September of last year and in Rodalies in December, when the figures for the same month of 2019 were exceeded, but they were specific moments. In the case of Renfe, the free passes were an important boost in the last four-month period of last year. As for the rest of the public means of transport, January and February of this year were close, although they were still slightly below. March has been when the trend has been consolidated, with numbers higher than those before the covid.
The third month of the year closed in the metro with 7.8% more than in 2019, Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (FGC) 5.4%, Rodalies de Catalunya 2.2% and the tram 11.1 %, according to data published by the Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM).
The increase has even more merit if one takes into account that one of the few things that the pandemic has left behind is teleworking for some professionals. It has not been as large a majority as some predicted, but even so, if only someone teleworks for a day, their travel for work reasons is reduced by 20%.
In contrast, the buses of Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) are still 4% below and those of the Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB) indirectly managed by 3.2%. The interurban buses of the Generalitat, which in absolute figures move fewer people than the previous ones, do share the trend of the railway and have grown by 8%.
The global balance for March is an increase of 3.5% compared to 2019, approaching 98 million monthly validations and thus fulfilling the forecast of reaching full recovery of public transport three years later. If it is compared with the situation of a year ago, the demand has increased by 19%.
The main novelty when compared to 2019 is the T-Mobility, which according to the ATM already registers a million validations every working day. This is approximately close to a third of the total.
