Following the approval of a 50% reduction in bus and train pass prices in the Algarve (click here), a new proposal to ensure that prices do not exceed €40 has also been approved by the Algarve municipalities association AMAL.
The proposal was presented by the Algarve’s PSD mayors to ensure that “no Algarve citizen is subjected to the flagrant injustice of paying more than €40 for their pass, no matter what their journey is”.
The goal was to ensure that citizens in the Algarve do not pay more than those in Lisbon and Porto, where a €40 tariff ceiling had already been implemented.
As PSD Algarve stressed, some people in the Algarve were still expected to pay nearly €100 for their pass despite the price reduction that had been approved last month.
The social-democrats also guarantee that this measure “won’t represent any further costs” but instead a redistribution of the nearly €1 million that was provided by the government via the Fundo Ambiental (Environmental Fund) – a sum that is still “more than 10 times lower than that attributed to Lisbon”.
Meetings are now due to be held with the region’s public transportation companies to discuss if the proposal is viable.
“But cheaper passes will do no good if the region’s public transportation network is not improved,” says PSD Algarve, now calling for further measures.
The Algarve’s railway made headlines several times last year for the worst reasons, with reports of over 1,000 cancelled trains in 2018. Passengers were often left stranded and there were little to no alternatives for those whose train was cancelled (click here).
Trains serving the Algarve railway are also rundown and break down frequently, complain users.
