Barcelona T10 price inflation vs general consumer price inflation

How the PSC screwed up transport pricing strategy for the 2010 regionals and 2011 municipals.


Municipal elections were in 2003, 2007 and 2011, regionals in 2003, 2006 and 2010, with the national-socialists in power until the last of both but already under pressure in Barcelona in 2007 and, due to the voting system, in all three regionally. With the municipal transport company losing some €80 million in 2011 and presumably comparable in previous years you’d expect to see the blue line racing away from the red at the beginning of mandates to reduce the deficit and then racing back pre-elections to placate voters. That happens, and in greater degree for the crucial 2010-11 round, but if I were the PSC I think I might be regretting not having raised prices substantially more in 2008 to allow room for smaller increases in 2010-11. Polling seems to suggest that the new, national-conservative regional and municipal governments are seen as having to make the best of a bad job, and I wonder how long that will last.

(Numbers: Badalona bitàcola, corrected for definitive IPC figure for 2011)

I’ve been running various scenarios for group travel in Spain over at Baldie Enterprises, and basically you have to be out of your mind to use public transport in Spain, which appears increasingly to be yet another service subsidised from general taxation to the benefit of the well-off. While it’s not quite in the same league as the Nigerian fuel subsidy scam, I believe Trias, Barcelona’s mayor, is in favour of ending public funding for TMB’s deficit, and with some quite alarming difficulties looming it is not difficult to imagine voices calling for its privatisation.

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Author The Singing Organ-GrinderPublished
Last updated 17/01/2012

This post pre-dates my organ-grinding days, and may be imported from elsewhere.Categories Empires, rulers and warfare, Les bourgeois

Barcelona (1399):

Convergence and Union (15): Convergence and Union was a Catalan nationalist electoral alliance in Catalonia, Spain.

Jordi Hereu i Boher (1):

Kaleboel (4307):

Public transport (3): Public transport is transport of passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public, typically managed on a schedule, operated on established routes, and that charge a posted fee for each trip.

Socialists' Party of Catalonia (44): The Socialists' Party of Catalonia is a social-democratic political party in Catalonia, Spain resulting from the merger of three parties: the Socialist Party of Catalonia–Regrouping, led by Josep Pallach i Carolà, the Socialist Party of Catalonia–Congress, and the Catalan Federation of the PSOE.

Transport in Barcelona (1): Public transport in Barcelona is operated by several companies, most of which are part of the Autoritat del Transport Metropolità, a transport authority managing services in the Barcelonès and the rest of the metropolitan area of Barcelona.

Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (4): Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona is the main public transit operator in Barcelona, made up of two formerly separate companies, Ferrocarril Metropolità de Barcelona, SA.

Xavier Trias (1): Xavier Trias i Vidal de Llobatera is a Spanish politician, member of the Catalan European Democratic Party and Mayor of Barcelona from July 2011 to June 2015.


Comments

  2. I can’t find anything much about their finances. It’s all a bit confusing as well, because, as M says, Trias, as well as deficit reduction, has talked about increasing subsidies. Given that there’s no money anyway I can imagine the final response being closer to that suggested by Conservative Home for Transport for London http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2009/11/a-conservative-government-should-scrap-the-3-billion-annual-subsidy-to-transport-for-london.html

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