The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda has decided to modify the conditions of use of the free conventional Media Distancia season tickets with a view to ending the incorrect use of these tickets.
Specifically, the objective is to stop the modus operandi of certain users who reserve a seat on the trains with the season ticket and then do not travel, as reported this Monday by the Department headed by Raquel Sánchez.
Therefore, the State official newsletter (BOE) publishes this Monday the new conditions of these subscriptions, which will come into force, for the most part, next Wednesday, December 7.
In this way, after detecting irregularities, the Ministry of Transport has modified the sale and use operations of free Media Distancia multi-trip tickets, restricting the formalization of trips and the acquisition of season tickets and sanctioning repeated irregular uses, among other actions.
With a view to promoting correct use, Renfe plans to impose a deposit of 20 euros and it will cancel the free subscription to users who, at least three times, have not canceled their seat reservation at least two hours in advance if they are not going to travel on the train in the end.
Although the pass will only be withdrawn from the line in which irregular use has been detected, the railway operator will not issue a new pass associated with that holder for any medium distance origin-destination within 30 days of the cancellation.
Current regulations establish that, in the case of conventional Medium Distance rail services, users must purchase a different pass for each origin-destination journey, which will be valid for unlimited travel between origin and destination requested by the client, in both directions.
Before arriving to withdraw the payment and the deposit, Renfe will send two notices to the holder when it detects that they have not finally traveled without canceling the reservation with the required advance notice. The third time misuse is incurred, it will proceed to penalize. Even so, a transitional period of seven days is established in which the traveler will be informed of the breach without this implying the application of the measure.
In parallel, the new conditions will limit the maximum number of journeys that can be formalized per season ticket to four daily roundtrips and it will be impossible to formalize two trips in the same direction until triple the scheduled travel time has elapsed.
