Citizens question the Government about the criteria used to apply the 50% discount on the AVE

MADRID, 7 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Ciudadanos has presented a series of questions in the Congress of Deputies addressed to the Government on the criteria used to apply the 50% discount on some high-speed lines on an exceptional basis between September and December of this year.

Only the routes Madrid-Palencia, Madrid-Zamora, León-Valladolid, Burgos-Madrid, León-Palencia, Burgos-Valladolid, Ourense-Zamora, Palencia-Valladolid, Huesca-Zaragoza, León-Segovia, Segovia-Zamora, Palencia-Segovia and Medina del Campo-Zamora will have this discount, only in Castilla y León, Aragón and Madrid.

According to Ciudadanos, this has generated controversy in other parts of Spain that could have benefited from a similar discount on short-distance AVE services, such as the Valencian Community, the Region of Murcia or Castilla-La Mancha.

The Government chose these relationships based on three criteria: that they be services in which there are no framework capacity reservation agreements in force, that the origins and destinations are not in relationships declared as public service obligations and that the time of travel between the origin and the destination of the voucher is less than 100 minutes in the service of shorter duration.

Given this, the 'orange' party asks why these criteria have been chosen, setting the limit at 100 minutes and "not one hour or two hours" and questions why regions such as the Valencian Community or Andalusia have been excluded if new operators, such as Ouigo or Iryo "have announced that they are not yet going to operate in these relations".

However, Ouigo has communicated its intention to start operations for Madrid-Valencia on October 7 and Iryo will also be released at the end of November.

"Has the Government considered the possibility of creating these tickets also on lines where there are capacity reserve framework agreements in force, subject to the fact that there is no other Renfe competitor still operating?", is the last question from Ciudadanos.