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Why some EMT de Madrid routes started using a 2 at the front
For years, some buses in Madrid could have the same number and still run on different routes. The key was a small line crossing the number on the old EMT signs, which made it possible to identify the branches and variants of a route. The arrival of electronic displays in the fleet turned that simple visual cue into a problem.
The change began in 1994 with the first low-floor MAN NL202 buses acquired by the Empresa Municipal de Transportes. Those 25 buses, numbered 7001 to 7025, introduced electronic dot-matrix displays, known among workers and enthusiasts as “sequin” panels.
At first there were not too many complications because the new vehicles mainly ran on conventional routes. In 1998, however, this type of display was already the majority and began to be used on services that had branches too, such as routes 2, 10, 47, 54, 58, 84, 110 and 129.
With the old destination boards, a bar above the number was enough to distinguish the variant. The new electronic displays did not reproduce that sign clearly enough. Other solutions were tried for a time: for example, two services identified as 129 ran from Plaza de Castilla, one towards Manoteras and the other towards Virgen del Cortijo.
In the early 2000s, EMT ultimately opted for a much easier-to-read formula: placing a 2 before the number associated with the branch. Thus, the variant of route 2 came to be identified as 202, and that of 129 became 229.
That numbering did not remain frozen either. The 202, for example, eventually disappeared in October 2012, when EMT merged its route with route 2 because both shared around 90% of the journey. Since then, the current route 2 has retained its passage through the area around Gregorio Marañón hospital.
And there is an important clarification: seeing a bus with a number above 200 today does not necessarily mean that it comes from one of those old branches. The current route 200, which connects Avenida de América with the airport, was created in 2004 from the reorganisation of the service previously provided by route 89. The 203 Exprés Aeropuerto began in 2010 with a different function.
While the numbers were changing, the technologies that had prompted that reorganisation were also disappearing. The last destination boards were used until October 2005; the first LED panels had started to arrive a year earlier, and the “sequins” survived until 2019. Today’s displays are LED, but part of that transitional period remains recognisable in the numbering of Madrid’s network.