News
Travelling ten Metro stations will cost the same as travelling five from October
Long journeys on Metro de Madrid will be cheaper from October. A single ticket within zone A will cost €1.50 regardless of the number of stations travelled, removing the system that progressively makes journeys more expensive until they reach €2.
The measure was announced this Thursday, 10 September, as part of the State of the Region Debate. For a user travelling ten stations or more, the saving will be 50 cents per journey compared with the current standard fare. On short journeys, by contrast, the price will remain the same.
Until now, a single Metro ticket in zone A costs €1.50 for journeys of up to five stations. From then on, ten cents are added for each additional station until reaching a maximum of €2 from the tenth station. This is the system Madrid has used since June 2012 and which will disappear in October.
The change will be especially noticeable for people who use the Metro occasionally and make long journeys without a monthly pass or ten-journey ticket. A trip that costs €2 today will cost €1.50; for someone making a return journey, the difference will be €1.
The flat fare refers to the single Metro ticket within zone A, so it should not be interpreted as a €1.50 price for every possible journey across the entire regional network. MetroSur, MetroNorte, MetroEste, the TFM section and light metro lines retain their own tickets and fare areas.
The supplement for using the Aeropuerto T1-T2-T3 and Aeropuerto T4 stations will not disappear either. Anyone travelling with a single ticket must currently continue to pay an additional €3, so a zone A journey to or from Barajas will not simply cost €1.50. Users with a valid Abono Transporte or a tourist ticket are exempt from that supplement.
The new fare comes just months after another important change in how the underground is used. Since June it has been possible to pay directly at ticket barriers with a bank card, mobile phone or smartwatch. The Comunidad launched that system with a single promotional price of €1.50 during its first weeks; the change now announced generally removes the surcharge linked to the number of stations.
From October, therefore, occasional travellers will no longer need to calculate how many stops separate their origin and destination within Madrid to know the price: five stations or fifteen will have the same basic fare of €1.50.